I'll Keep You Warm
by LittlePoppett
Summary: Modern AU, so something a bit different from me Snippets of Tom and Sybil's life together - likely pretty fluffy! Massively out of order with the timeline I intended but I will sort that later! Hope you like it. LP. x P.S. When selecting the characters I nearly got 'S.O'Brien' by accident - now that would be an unexpected story!
1. Chapter 1

**This is (chronologically) the fourth of about five of these little one shots which are somewhat interwoven. Modern AU, which I have never done before but I thought it was worth giving it a go! In this one characters are all the same ages etc as they would be during series 3. Written and posted in one sitting so I anticipate there will be a few errors! Enjoy, LP. x**

Keep You Warm – Early January 2013

It was dark and cold; the novelty of winter had worn off with the end of Christmas. The biting chill of dark days and the inevitable costs it bought had been basked in the golden glow of the festive season and forgotten but now in the cold light of January they were obvious; clothes that fit too tight, bills that were higher than could really be afforded, cupboards cluttered with unwanted gifts. But for them both there was still that feeling in the pit of their stomachs that comes from something new that both excites you beyond belief and terrifies you at the same time.

The cot wedged into the corner of their room, the basket of nappies on the dresser, a drawer full of clothes that had seemed so small to him, like nothing could ever be so little and delicate, socks for impossibly tiny feet. They all served as a reminder, when he woke in the middle of the night confused and foggy headed, a mewing coming to his ears and Sybil shifting out of the bed beside him. She was going to their daughter. The baby that was the cause of the feeling, the hopeless excitement that he now felt almost subconsciously, the baby that was still swamped by the clothes he thought even the tiniest body would fill, whose cries in the middle of the night still sounded foreign to him – still effected by the newness of her life, not her true voice yet.

She had been born in the week between Christmas and New Year, the week that had always seemed so uncomfortable – neither here nor there. Sybil had been a little sad saying that the poor thing would never have her birthday remembered, it would inevitably be overshadowed by Christmas, no matter how much they tried. People would give her one present for both, when any other child would have two through the year; children would never be around for her parties, too ensconced in familial routine of the Christmas season; she would never spend her birthday in the sun, in the garden, she would have a childhood of birthdays cooped up indoors.

But he had been glad of it in some ways, now that in between week had something, now it had her, they would celebrate her in a week that would otherwise be spent working through the dregs of a box of Quality Street and watching an endless stream of Christmas broadcasting, being lulled into a trance in front of the television.

Since they had brought the baby home he'd taken to working at the kitchen table in the afternoons with her bundled against him, wrapped in shawls and blankets to compensate for the temperamental heating. It allowed Sybil some sleep, without being disturbed by the baby in the room with her. It seemed that since becoming a mother her hearing could pick up the slightest sniff, the catch of breath in the baby's chest, even the softest snore – and all of it set her on edge, he had caught her countless times when she was supposed to be resting, placing a palm on the baby's chest, checking she was still breathing. He did wonder though, how long he could keep up the guise – his afternoons spent 'working' were more often than not spent being mesmerized by the little being in his arms.

Work had picked up again, thankfully, in the new year, he had had a few more 'out of office' articles commissioned and somehow, despite the sleepless nights and the excitement and the new found worry, inspiration for his book had come flooding back to him after a spell of writers block had left the document frozen in time for months. Work had given him a sort of half paternity leave, meaning he didn't have to come in as long as he maintained his usual output from home. He was glad of it, they needed the money, and it gave him reason to stay in the flat with Sybil and the baby just _being_, something that gave him more joy than he ever anticipated it would.

He would retreat back to the kitchen and his laptop of an evening, when the baby had been fed and tucked up in the Moses basket in the cot and Sybil was knitting minute cardigans or reading or doing the minimal cleaning her stitches would allow her. He had had to stop her a few times, when she was taking it too far, testing her still fragile body beyond the limits she had yet to accept it now had. It was a throw back to the early months of winter that she had spent 'nesting' as her mother had so fondly called it the morning she came round to find Sybil at seven months pregnant stood on a chair disinfecting the top of the kitchen cabinets.

That particular Saturday afternoon it had started to snow again and by the time the football scores were being read out on Radio Five Live, a heavy layer of white had settled on the already icy pavements on the street outside. Both the baby and Sybil had slept through the four o'clock feed and as the time ticked round, approaching five, he knew he had to wake them both.

He wrapped the blanket, a white shawl his mother had sent from Ireland as soon as she had found out he was to be a father, more tightly around the baby and she shifted in his arms, a little starfish hand escaping the swaddle and pressing against her cheek. He kissed her forehead as he rose to his feet, taking in her smell and the softness of her skin. It was still a marvel to him that only a week ago she had been the cause of the kicks he felt beneath the skin stretched over his wife's round belly, that – cheesy as he knew it sounded – he and Sybil had _made_ her, made something so beautiful.

The curtains in the bedroom were still open and the streetlight outside illuminated the falling snow as it swirled and danced to the ground. Sybil was sleeping as she always had done, slightly on her front, legs drawn up and the side of one face pressed deeply into the pillow. She had been frustrated by the swell of her belly in the latter months of her pregnancy and the fact it forced her to sleep on her side. The pillows she had under her chest have away the soreness in her breasts, but she had been too eager to return to that position, the one she had told him numerous times as she tossed and turned in the middle of the night from back to side was "the only normal way to sleep" to allow them to stop her. It had amused him; as if she was trying to rebel against her body, reclaim it for herself after months on loan to the little person in her belly. She had the duvet and the old eiderdown pulled right up so that you could barely see anything of her but her hair and an inch or so of her forehead. Her mother had given her the eiderdown the first time they had visited, when it was still summer and the sun warmed the flat. Cora had knowingly eyed the high ceilings and old window fittings and the ancient, rickety radiator and left the eiderdown on the trunk at the bottom of the bed. It wasn't until November, when the first nights of negative temperatures set in that they realized how astute Sybil's mother had been.

He didn't want to wake her really, she was still exhausted from the strain of the pregnancy and the caesarean, an emergency one ordered three weeks before the baby's due date when Sybil's blood pressure had rocketed and the swelling in her feet had suddenly been regarded as something more serious than an unwelcome symptom of pregnancy that wouldn't allow her to wear anything on her feet in late December but flip flops or slippers.

It had been terrifying, getting the call from the office, his first day back since Christmas. Her voice had been fraught – it was only meant to be one of her routine weekly appointments with the midwife, she was going to nip to M&S on the way home and get something to eat for tea with the remaining left over turkey and see if there was anything left in the sale after the Boxing Day scavengers had picked over it. But suddenly it was the day. They had anticipated hours sat waiting for things to happen, waiting for the pains to amount to something – and now suddenly the certainty and the swiftness and the suddenness of it was terrifying. He'd called her mother and she had got on the first available train to London, arriving at the hospital a little after her first granddaughter did.

The baby shifted in his arms and began to wake – he knew it wouldn't be long until she realized she was hungry and he wouldn't have the option of waking Sybil gently. He lowered himself onto the bed, in the space just above her knees, her face was turned to him and her features were soft with sleep. It made him smile, to see her sleeping, how young it made her look, how even when she was at her most anxious sleep could instantly iron the worry away from her brow. He pushed the eiderdown away from her face slightly and tucked an errant tendril of hair behind her ear. The feeling of his thumb stroking her cheek brought her round, her eyes flickered open gently and she smiled up at him.

"Hey sleepyhead." He kept his voice soft, not wanting to jerk either of them too abruptly from their slumber, "I think you are needed." He nodded his head at the baby in his arms and Sybil mirrored his action, nodding her agreement sleepily and rolling onto her back. As she pushed herself into a sitting position she glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table and raised an eyebrow at him. "I know, I know. But I saw no harm in it when you were both still sleeping. She'd have woken if she was really hungry." He passed the baby over to her, feeling her little body begin to wake, her muscles stretching as she stirred. He watched them for a while, as they settled into the feed – they were still learning, both of them, and it took the baby a while to latch on. He saw Sybil's face tense as she did, it was still sore but she assured him it was getting better. He didn't like seeing this hurt her, he hadn't anticipated this much pain on the other side of the birth. It amazed him that after months of being sick followed by the near constant back ache and the itching of her skin stretching, the pain that had amounted from the birth itself, that still stuck around in the form of the healing incision on her abdomen and now the discomfort of feeding, Sybil still gazed down at the baby as she fed like she would do it all again in a heartbeat. A mother's love he supposed was not to be underestimated.

Sybil made a soft noise, a hum of contentment as she tipped her head back to rest on the headboard briefly, eyes flicking shut. "Thank you," her voice was throaty from sleep and she languidly opened her eyes and looked at him, "Thank you for letting me sleep longer."

He smiled at her and tickled the sole of the baby's little foot which had escaped the blanket, he rubbed the smooth skin of her instep with his thumb; the size of her foot against his hand still something of a novelty. "You've earned it." He rose and leant forward and kissed Sybil's forehead. "I'll start the cooking, eat at 6?"

She spoke without looking up, "Perfect."

He took a moment to look at them, Sybil mesmerized by the baby, stroking her cheek with her forefinger while she suckled. He collected the empty mugs from their respective bedside tables. "Tea?"

She nodded up at him, "Oh Mr Branson, you read my mind." She smiled and a twinkle in her eye let him know she was about to tease him, "Whatever did I do to earn a man like you, with such virtues as the ability to make the perfect cup of tea?" He chuckled as he made his way out of the room. He could think of a few things.


	2. Chapter 2

Christmas 2012

Sybil had insisted on them making the trip up to Yorkshire that Christmas. He knew her mother's invitation had been somewhat hesitant, not expecting them to take up the offer and if he was honest he had been expecting to spend Christmas just the two of them in the flat, bundled up in their own little cocoon.

"I can't stay cooped up in here anymore." He opened his mouth to protest, but she pressed a finger against his lips. "Nope – _you_ get to go out to work everyday. All that bloody ice out there has meant everyone looks at me like an irresponsible fool when I go outside, they see the belly and then look at me with condemnation."

They were decorating the tree, something he had resisted for as long as possible, it was now mid-December and he had grown tired of her talking about tinsel and wreaths and baubles. He had given in and braved the weather and the crowds and paid the Christmas department of John Lewis a visit. Her face when he returned from work with an artificial tree and two boxes of fairy lights had been magical, he thought she had actually squealed. She hadn't even complained that it wasn't a real tree, perhaps his ranting about how untidy they were and how they looked awful by Boxing Day had sunk in.

It wasn't that he didn't like Christmas; he just preferred to celebrate on the day itself, without the build up which seemed to start earlier and earlier every year. Sybil was the complete opposite. He hadn't allowed her to do anything until at least mid-November for fear that she would burn out her excitement before advent had even begun.

"I'll still have a month left, probably more, you know what they say about first babies and I can't spend all that time looking at these four walls." She put on an exaggerated face, sticking out her bottom lip and widening her eyes, "Please?" She peppered his face with kisses, pushing herself against him, a string of tinsel still in his hands. He knew exactly what she was doing, wooing him into submission, and they both knew it would work – she would get her way, as she so often did.

"Fine, fine." He slipped his hands around her waist and smiled as he felt the hardness of the baby press into him. "We will drive up on Christmas Eve, set off early to beat the crowds and come back the day after Boxing Day." She nodded excitedly and kissed his cheek, her smile growing as she turned back to the tree.

And that was how he found himself crawling along the M1, the motorway already rammed at 7am, dreams of a quiet Christmas alone long gone. Sybil fell asleep somewhere between Leicester and Nottingham having chatted animatedly about her childhood Christmases at Downton since they took the exit onto the motorway. It wasn't until they drove past Leeds, the last big city on their route, that she stirred – the sun had only just risen and it's emergence caused great, beautiful scars of colour to stretch across the sky.

Much of the last hour of the journey was spent in a contented silence, listening to the cheesy Christmas version of some radio breakfast show. It wasn't until they passed Ripon that she began to shift in her seat.

"You don't think Mary will be funny about it do you?" Her words seemed to come from nowhere, set against the opening chords to Fairytale of New York, tinny through the radio speakers.

He looked at her briefly, before turning back to the road. He face was sincere and held genuine concern. "About what? The baby?" Sybil nodded at him, one hand tracing circles over the peak of her stomach.

Sybil was still struck by guilt that she had fallen pregnant so easily, without thinking really, when her sister was struggling to do the same. Mary and Matthew were beginning investigations at a fertility specialist in the New Year.

"Of course not, love. Of course not. She is as thrilled as everyone else. You shouldn't feel guilty about something which isn't under your control." He took one of her hands and pressed it to his lips, "Okay? It'll be fine. I promise."

Sybil still self-consciously cradled her belly when they first arrived, when they were greeted first by her parents and then Mary and Matthew. She hadn't seen her eldest sister in the months that she was so noticeably pregnant – not since the wedding, when the baby's roundness could still have been a slightly unflattering fold of fabric or a few too many indulgent dinners.

"My God Sybil, you look wonderful." Mary's words were genuine, and he felt something like pride as he looked at her. She _did_ look wonderful. He'd never really understood it before, when people talked about how attractive pregnancy made a woman but he saw it in her. He wasn't sure whether it was knowing that it was his baby she was carrying or that it was her, but he had never seen her more beautiful. "Mama said pregnancy suited you, but I thought it was just one of those things people said!" He saw Sybil squeeze her sister's hand and Mary, astute as ever, added, "It's alright you know, I haven't got to the point that I treat every pregnant woman I see with disdain." They turned to follow her parents into the house as Matthew began unloading their bags from the boot of the car, "Now lets get inside, I want you to tell me all the baby related secrets you're not telling anyone else until it's born. Naturally I'll need to know these things if I am to have a chance at being the favourite aunty, I need a head start on Tom's sisters."

He and Matthew both laughed, imagining Edith's reaction if she could hear.

* * *

She poked at the presents under the tree, searching for the ones with her name on. Her grandmother looked on in a kind of tolerant deprecation. She raised an eyebrow at him when he caught her watching Sybil circle the tree on her knees, reading the labels tied to the gifts.

"I've tried, believe me. Even threatening that everything would magically disappear did nothing when she was little."

He laughed and took a sip from his drink, settling back into reading the newspaper, the dog curled around his feet. A gasp came from beneath the tree and he looked up to see Sybil leaning back onto her haunches, looking down at a neatly wrapped present. He heard her sniff and as she turned to face him saw a tear begin to snake down her face. "Tom." She beckoned him over and slipped from his chair onto the floor beside her, Isis followed him and beginning to sniff at the chocolate decorations hanging on the tree.

She passed him the present, wrapped in red paper and he turned the read the tag. "Baby, Happy Christmas, love Aunty Mary and Uncle Matthew." He looked up to see Sybil's blue eyes, glossy with tears, staring back at him.

"There's going to be a _baby_ here next Christmas. A nearly one year old. _Our baby._" She rubbed at her stomach, tracing the movement beneath her skin.

"Are you only just figuring this out?" He chuckled slightly as he spoke, watching her lip shake as her emotions began to get the better of her.

"I don't know," Her voice wavered as he pulled her to his chest, "I know it sounds silly, but I don't think it had quite dawned on me – it'll be a real little person."

He smiled as she stroked the paper surrounding the package. "A real little person for you to get excited about Christmas with, in a few years they might even be as excitable as you." He kissed her forehead gently and looked over to see Violet watching them over the top of her book, eyebrows raised, shaking her head slightly.

Cora came running down the stairs and threw a sympathetic look in Tom and Sybil's direction as she headed for the front door, "Edith is here. Come on darling, she has been dying to see you." He helped her to her feet and watched as Sybil followed her mother out into the hallway and out of the front door.

"To regale her with stories of her travels no doubt. I hope she has something good to tell, there is nothing more tedious than Christmas Eve dinner at the vicarage." He responded with a mistrusting look, "Oh my boy. You will learn with time – I have years of experience behind me. It's best to get some spirits down you early, it numbs the boredom before it truly sets in."

As Violet too shuffled off to the front of the house to meet her granddaughter, Tom wondered if he would ever have the Dowager Countess truly figured out.

He woke the next morning to find she wasn't in the bed beside him. She was rarely awake before him these days and the disorientation from the unfamiliar bed made him panic. He was back to the days of last summer, finding her in the bathroom in the morning, or stretched out on the cool of the kitchen tiles because she was too hot anywhere else, the baby acting like her own personal radiator – in August, the last thing she wanted.

He spotted her curls, wild from sleep, over the top of the footboard. She was sat on the floor in front of the fire, her legs stretched out in front of her, wiggling her toes in the warmth. He slipped out of the bed, pulling the blanket from the top layer of bedclothes. She was looking down at the swell of her stomach, pressing at the little protrusions caused by the baby's limbs as it wriggled, fighting for ever shrinking space. He stood and took it in for a while, she was completely oblivious, lost in her own little world and it made him smile. She already knew the little person that lay curled up inside her, he marveled at the way it already seemed to have a personality to her, it had moods and hiccups and opinions on certain foods. He felt like he was waiting his turn to get to know it, to bond with it in the way she already was.

He coughed, attempting to bring his presence to her attention without startling her and she looked up at him, eyes wide and a smile on her face. He settled in beside her, stretching out his legs alongside hers and feeling the fire warm his toes. He wrapped the blanket around both of their shoulders drawing her into him.

"Happy Christmas." He almost breathed the greeting and she smiled at him, he pressed a kiss on to her forehead as she shifted her body so it better fit alongside his.

"Mmm," She sighed her contentment, "Happy Christmas." Her voice was soft and warm and slightly croaky from sleep. She lay her head on his shoulder and they both stared into the fire for a while, watching the flames dance, happy in each other's company. She took his hand suddenly and placed it just below her bust, on the roundness of her stomach – already seeming almost comically large for her frame – and he felt a number of strong kicks against his hand. He stroked at the spot with his thumb, as the little foot continued it's movement, making the undulation of her skin visible even through the fabric of her pyjamas.

"And Happy Christmas to you." He pressed a kiss into the softness of her hair, it tickled his cheeks. "Couldn't sleep?" She hummed her agreement. "Baby having a party in there?"

She turned to look at him then, her eyes twinkling with excitement. "No, not really – it's only just started. I was too excited. I woke up at four and I saw the stockings full of presents at the end of the bed. I tried but I couldn't get back to sleep. I got up and lit the fire – I didn't want to disturb you."

He looked at his watch and sighed. 7:30. "You've been here for three hours?" She nodded. "I'm sorry, I thought you were twenty-four not four?" She slapped his arm comically and shifted round to face him, pulling her legs underneath her.

"Now, now Mr Scrooge, you can't bah humbug _on _Christmas Day."

He spotted it then, the Christmas stocking hidden behind her, the pile of foils from chocolate coins next to it. He raised an eyebrow at her, spreading the pile around on the floor – revealing the true extent of her indulgence. She immediately put on _that_ face, the one he couldn't resist – the one that feigned innocence. "I suppose Santa gave you permission to dive into your stocking and help yourself before the rest of the house is awake?" She giggled, pulling a still wrapped coin from her pocket, the copper coloured foil glinting in the firelight. They heard movement along the corridor outside, the others heading down to the tree, pyjama-clad and with stockings in hand to begin the Christmas routine.

"It wasn't for me. He told me I could have them early, something for the baby." She unwrapped the disc of chocolate and pushed it into his mouth.

"Is that right?" The response he received was a smile and a cheeky glint in her eyes. He got to his feet as he stood, and held out his hand to help Sybil up. "Right, well you'll both be on the naughty list next year." She pushed herself onto her knees and accepted his help to stand; he placed a kiss on the end of her nose and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders.

"That hardly seems fair. We had permission from on high."

He stopped half way through pulling on his dressing gown. "On high? Christ, if my mother could hear you now. It's Christmas and you are referring to Father Christmas being 'on high'. She'd be marching you down to see the nativity at church before you knew what had hit you lecturing you about the true meaning of Christmas."

"Another strike against my name for next year?" She held out her hand for his; her curls were wild around her face and her cheeks were flushed from sitting too close to the fire. He imagined she was exactly the same on Christmas morning as a little girl, then images came into his head of another little girl, _their little girl_, waking them early on Christmas morning, chattering about Father Christmas and reindeer and how pretty the candles had been in church the night before. He didn't feel like such a Scrooge then.

"Perhaps," he took her hand and they made toward the door. "But I think this offence may have occurred too late in the day for the elves to come and take back this year's presents."


	3. Chapter 3

**Am hoping the ridiculous length of this makes up for my less than regular updates…**

**And here begins the slightly erratic chronology. I am posting these as I write them, not necessarily in the order they **_**should**_** be, I may rejig them when I have them all written so they are in the right order but for now I'll have to make you all do a bit of mind gymnastics! This is set months prior to the last two. Enjoy and let me know what you think! I hope it does something to fill the Downton hole now there are no Downton days. Hope you are all well, LP. x**

June 2012

It had been too much for her in retrospect, the move from Dublin. No one had known at the time though, when everything was being put into place not even they knew she was pregnant. It was in the days before they were due to leave, they had been packing up their books into boxes, the deadline for transport van looming. She had burst in to tears over a pile of Agatha Christies – sobbing out her words, telling him she thought she might be pregnant, that she was scared and sorry and didn't know what to do.

It'd had hit him like a brick wall; not so much what she had to say, not at that moment, but the emotion that poured out of her. He was more distraught that she felt she had something to apologise for, as if she had done something wrong. Her own distress shook him far more than the thought that there could be a baby resting, unknown and unseen in her abdomen.

Then there was a rushed trip to the Tesco down the road. He left her wrapped in a blanket on the sofa, hands around a mug of tea and tearstains still present on her cheeks. He hovered awkwardly around the chemist's aisle, ruminating over the irony of placing the contraceptives and pregnancy tests next to one another – as if the shelves of condoms were some kind of mocking reminder that you never can be too careful. He bought a two pack of tests, knowing she would want to take it more than once, repeating the percentage error stats on the leaflet inside the box. The morose adolescent at the till barely looked at him – this could be a life changing purchase, he thought, in a matter of minutes everything could be different and the spotty youth in front of him would know nothing of it, he'd just continue his gum chewing and the grunting that under no circumstances could pass as customer service.

She took both tests, as he knew she would and both were positive. The line turning a dark pink barely a minute into the time they were told to wait. It was almost instantaneous after that, like the symptoms had held off until they knew; he woke up the next morning to hear her in the bathroom retching into the toilet.

A trip to the doctors was one of the first things they did when they arrived in London. They sat side by side in the waiting room surrounded by people spluttering into handkerchiefs and wiping noses. He had looked up at one point from the six-month-old copy of Take a Break to see Sybil staring straight ahead, transfixed by something. He followed her gaze to a woman with a two year old whining on her knee, a bruise blossoming on the child's forehead and snot running down his face. The woman looked utterly miserable, worn out, and was speaking to the little boy in short, clipped tones, words he couldn't quite make out. He'd reached out and squeezed Sybil's hand, it pulled her out of herself and she turned to him, eyes wide, almost like she had forgotten anyone else was there.

The doctor confirmed it with another urine test, took some blood to send off for a cacophony of tests, examined Sybil. "I'd say you're about seven or eight weeks gone, everything seems perfectly healthy and normal." She began to discuss where to go from here, what appointments there were to set up, things to do and not to do, to eat and not to eat. The words washed over Sybil, who was looking down at her hands in her lap, picking at her cuticles. The doctor glanced at Tom, looking at him with something he thought was almost suspicion and then settled her gaze back on Sybil, her face creasing with concern. She leant forward, into Sybil and away from him, "Would you like the rest of the appointment to be in private? To discuss your options?" Tom realized then that this doctor had suddenly painted a picture of him as some sort of misogynist controller – that Sybil's melancholy was result of his forcefulness, his harsh words, some sort of power he had over her. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a breath, it hurt him that someone could think of him like that, think that was the way he was with her.

Sybil's eyes shot up and she looked the doctor in the face, shaking her head gently. "No, no. I'm sorry – I'm just a bit – it's still all a bit of a shock, that's all." She looked at Tom and proffered a weak smile, "For both of us. We weren't exactly expecting it."

The doctor nodded, clearly still somewhat cautious of Tom but sensing that Sybil would say nothing against him. She began to talk through the options, handing them leaflets about this and that and advising that they make a decision soon, the sooner the better – did they have any idea either way now? Sybil stayed quiet and the doctor looked at Tom, whose own eyes were on Sybil. He shook his head. She scheduled tentative appointments for a few weeks time, told Sybil to start taking folic acid and to make sure she was eating properly and told them to contact the surgery when they knew what they wanted to go ahead with. Sybil shoved the bundle of papers the doctor had given them into her handbag as they left the room, pulling her coat further around her. They stood at the front door, looking outside from the relative safety of the reception of the doctor's surgery. It was raining, vertical sheets of grey rain falling from grey clouds onto the grey pavements. Pathetic fallacy, he thought as they both peered out into the street and Sybil began to open her umbrella. He pulled her into his side, an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. They stepped out into it then, wrapped in each other, and silently walked home, each glad of the other's company.

* * *

They spent an awkward few weeks after that avoiding a decision; he would sit with her in the mornings as she emptied the contents of her stomach into the toilet and did his best to find something to cook that she could face eating. Sybil occupied herself with the move and all the changes it brought with it. A different country, a different city, getting to grips with the Underground and figuring out where the supermarkets were, signing up with a dentist, sorting the bills and a 10 day long saga trying to set up a phone line and internet. London was an entirely new beast; Dublin had become safe and familial in their months there and suddenly all of that had been ripped away and they had to start afresh, a scary fresh.

It was when her mother came down to see them, to see the flat, that he saw her begin to lose her brave face and he knew it had been playing on her mind as much as his. Cora's concern when she saw Sybil, when they met her at Kings Cross, made him see what being around Sybil for weeks hadn't allowed him to see. She was thinner and pale and her smile was shaky.

Despite two large suitcases Cora insisted on walking back to the flat rather than taking a taxi, said they should make the most of the weather, as it wasn't far. It was the first bright day after a so far disappointing few weeks of spring. He slipped his hand into Sybil's pocket and she wrapped his hand in hers, squeezing his fingers in her own. She stayed quiet, her mother made conversation – telling them about the goings on at Downton; Violet's latest run in with Isobel over a fundraiser at the hospital, Robert's ongoing argument with the National Trust over the tea rooms in the Abbey and the overhaul Matthew and Mary had begun of the old game keeper's cottage on the estate, they had apparently braved much of the winter without heating. He interjected enough, added to the conversation for both of them as Sybil stared resolutely ahead, burrowing further into her scarf.

He came home from work the next day to find Cora alone in the living room, sat in the armchair reading a magazine. She looked up at his as he walked in and threw his keys into the dish full of loose change and tube tickets and other debris of day-to-day life that sat nestled between travel guides on the bookcase.

"She's asleep." Cora offered explanation for Sybil's absence, from the look on his face – an almost sympathetic look – he realized she knew.

"She told you?" His voice wavered slightly as he asked; he shrugged off his jacket and laid it over the back of the settee approaching her slowly.

"She told me." Her face stayed calm and she leant forward to place her magazine on the coffee table.

"You don't seem that shocked." He skirted the sofa, settling on it in the seat closest to Cora. "You were expecting it?"

She shook her head almost immediately, "I wouldn't go that far. But she hadn't been right, she hadn't been _Sybil_ on the phone for a while and I suspected there was something. Then when I saw her yesterday, that first glimpse of her at the station my mind was going to all sorts of horrible places. In some ways I am relieved it is this and not something more…more sinister."

There was a silence, then as they both gathered their thoughts. "She won't talk to me about it. These past couple of weeks, she's buried herself in the move and she won't let me in. It's like she thinks if she ignores it, it will all go away."

"She's worried about you."

"Me?" His brow creased with concern. Jesus, he thought, this was so Sybil – everything should be about her, all his attentions, all her attentions on her and she was worrying about him. "What has she possibly got to worry about with me?"

"She's worried that you'll feel obligated to stick around – that you'll be with her because you feel you should and not because you want to…" He opened his mouth to object, he needed to tell her how wrong it was, how far from the truth it was, but Cora interrupted him with a shake of the head. "I know; I can see that isn't the case at all. _We_ both know that that isn't true." She looked at him with a slight knowing smile, "But we don't have a million hormones coursing through us, making us feel emotions we didn't know we had about things that we didn't know mattered. With all three of mine Robert banned me from listening to the Archers, I became a little too empathetic to the characters. A lamb died in an episode when I was having Edith, I was inconsolable for hours over a fictional lamb." Her face suddenly became more serious, "This is different obviously, to a sheep dying on a radio program, she has got a thought into her head – a seed she perhaps planted rather than you – and it has gone out of her control."

"She thinks that I would be selfish enough to let her follow me around the country, let her make her own sacrifices to do so, and consider jumping ship when things get hard? What can I do though, what can I do to help?" He picked at the stitching on his jeans, a nervous tic almost, something to occupy his hands. "How can I make her see?"

"I don't think you are doing anything wrong as it is. She just needs assurance, she will see in a few weeks, when her body has settled a little. Just keep doing your best – no matter how much resistance she seems to put up." She cleared her throat slightly; "I'm also ashamed to say she has got herself into a state over what her father will think. Strange really, as I am not sure she has ever given much credence to her father's opinions in the past. There's something about little girls and their fathers though – no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise, there will always be some things that they strive for their pop's approval of." Cora glanced at him, "You could be the one whose approval is being sought some day, then perhaps you will understand it better."

"I don't even know if she wants…I haven't wanted to bring it up, what she wants to do. The doctor pushed for a decision at the appointment, but she just kept quiet." He scrubbed at his face with his palms, "The way she's been, I can't help but think that she doesn't," he coughed as his voice grew thicker with emotion, "that she doesn't want it. But I don't want her to feel that that is what I want."

"Is it?" Cora placed a hand on his forearm, a comfort, a reassurance. "You are allowed an opinion too, I know some may say otherwise and perhaps they would chastise me for saying it but surely you should be allowed to feel something about it too?"

He shook his head his face still partially in his hands, "I don't want her to do something she doesn't want to – either way. I don't want her to do anything purely for my benefit; I couldn't bear it if she felt I was forcing her decision. If she feels she wants to do more, see more, study more – whatever more – before she's a mother then that is fine. I cannot imagine myself facing parenthood when I was her age. Christ, I could barely make beans on toast or iron a shirt when I was her age. I'd understand." He looked up at her, "I've dreamt about it though, the baby I suppose. The baby and her." He lost himself in his thoughts for a moment, "My subconscious imagining what I daren't consciously."

"I think you need to go in there and talk to her. Tell her what you have told me. She has at least broken the wall with someone now; that has always been her way. She bottles it up, tries to deal with it herself and then eventually it bubbles over, one person breaks the dam and then she finds it easier." She squeezed his hand with her own, "It doesn't mean anything you know, that you've had a few weeks of drifting around one another, it doesn't mean that you are making one another unhappy or that you are a terrible partner to her or that you don't love one another. It happens all the time, it just so happens that yours has happened at a rather important time. You just need to reconnect, tell the other how you feel. But you really need to do it now, you need to decide together what you both want to do."

He nodded at her words but stayed frozen to his spot on the sofa. Cora leant forward and picked up her magazine again, "Go on, I'll be here keeping quiet." He smiled at her and rose, making his way to the bedroom. He paused before her reached the door into the hallway and turned back to her, "What are you going to do about Robert?"

Cora looked up from her reading, "I'll not let on about anything unless a decision is made that he needs to know about. If Sybil doesn't want him to know then it is not for me to tell."

"Thank you."

She nodded at him, "You're welcome."

She looked green. He had never understood that expression before; he had never seen anyone look even remotely green when they were ill, pale perhaps but nothing more. Now he knew what people meant, there was a pallid green tinge to her skin that made it undeniable that there was any place for her today but in bed. The scent of bleach had hit him as he walked past the bathroom and he knew that she had spent much of the afternoon hanging over the toilet bowl. He perched on the edge of the bed her sleeping form in front of him, her breathing gentle, her hands clasped between her and the mattress in the gap formed between her chest and chin.

"Oh Love, I'm so sorry." He barely whispered as he rested his hand on the small of her back. "I'm so sorry I have made you feel so awful and I'm so sorry that you haven't felt able to talk to me about it." He began to stroke her back gently, rubbing softly in circles, "I love you so much."

She stirred, his touch bringing her out of the limbo between true sleep and wakefulness. She reached out a hand to him, dragging him down onto the bed beside her, she settled against him, still half asleep – her back pressed against his chest. Their hands moved together to her abdomen, and he rested his face against her neck as she slipped back into sleep, daring to imagine the child that lay a few inches beneath his palm.

* * *

Cora left the following afternoon, reluctantly but with a dinner engagement she couldn't avoid pulling her back to Downton. She kissed her daughter goodbye, smoothing Sybil's hair behind her ears as she squeezed her hand, promising to be back in a few weeks time, that there was something for them waiting in the bedroom. Tom walked her outside to the taxi and paused before saying his goodbyes, unable to find the words to thank her.

Cora smiled, nodding at him, understanding. "Just take care of her for me. She's still my baby really, she'll always be my baby."

He smiled at that, her trust reassuring. "I will, I promise I will."

When he got back into the flat Sybil was sat at the kitchen table, a mug of tea resting in both hands. It was mid-afternoon and she was still in her pyjamas, her hair wild from last night's sleep. She smiled up at him when he walked back in, setting down her tea and walking slowly over to him.

"I feel disgusting, I need a shower." She put her hands on his hips; drawing herself into him and feeling his own hands settle on her wrists. "Do you fancy joining me?" He nodded, placing a kiss on the end of her nose before she turned away, disappearing further into the flat.

He heard her turn the shower on, the sound of the water hitting the floor of the bath and took a sip from the half full mug of tea before following her. This was going to be more than just a shared shower, he knew that from the way her brow had been slightly creased – she had something to say, she was working up to something.

It had become something of a habit of late, having important conversations in a shared shower. It was something Tom had known growing up - it was the only way his parents could have a conversation with one another without being interrupted by one of the kids, and it saved on water, anything for a few less pennies to go in the meter – and to him it made perfect sense. She had laughed at him the first time he suggested it.

She was already in when he entered the bathroom, her silhouette visible behind the shower curtain. She was singing, something which never failed to bring a smile to his face, an odd medley of the songs she'd been playing on her iPod lately – it infuriated him sometimes, the way she listened to music, the same four or five songs on repeat until she grew sick of them and switched her loyalty to something new, which she then played to death too.

He stripped off, shivering as his feet hit the cool tiles of the bathroom floor, and slipped into the steamy warmth of the shower with her. She fell silent, her back to him as he moved under the water, her hair in wet curls trailing down over her shoulders.

"I want to, if you do." The water had barely wet his skin when he felt her hands on his back and heard her words. He turned to face her, his eyebrows creased, questioning her. "The baby, I want to have it, if you want to have it. It was the shock at first, and I had to think it through, think everything through. I'm sorry that I shut down, that I didn't talk to you when I should have. Mama, she told me to follow my heart with this one – she said, she said I shouldn't try to over think this. It doesn't mean the end, it just means something different. So I want to see what that will be – the something different." He pulled her face toward his, his forehead pressed against hers, their noses touching. He smiled at her and pushed a kiss against her lips. "Does that mean you want to?" He nodded, swallowing the lump of emotion that had formed in his throat.

"You're happy?" He half whispered it into her ear, pulling her toward him, his hand on the small of her back. She pulled herself back to look him in the eye, their hips still pressed together and smiled a smile which spoke so much louder than any words.

* * *

"Marry me?" Her eyes fluttered open at his words, her hair, still slightly damp from the shower, was curling around her head on the pillow. The blankets were pulled up to her nose and he could read her reaction from her eyes alone. She took a breath, about to respond, but he searched for her hand amongst their cocoon of covers and squeezed it, silencing her. "I know…I know what you think, that you could never agree to marry someone when you were pregnant because you would spend the rest of your life wondering if that was why, if they asked because they thought they had to." Her eyes were shining out at him in the semi-darkness, the curtains still thrown open to reveal the sky still shot through with the last of the day's light. "I'm not being chivalrous, asking because I feel obligated. I'm not doing this for anyone else, I'm asking because I want to marry _you_ and have you by my side forever."

"And you can have that, you already have that." Her voice was still tainted by her tiredness, giving away how close to sleep she had been. She shifted further into him and draped an arm across his chest. He felt her feet, icy cold as always, work their way between his calves, their bare legs a tangle under the bed sheets.

He wanted to prove to her that his proposal was the complete opposite of feeling that he should, no one, not even Violet really, would be appalled in the long run if they weren't married. The baby would be born and the absence of a ring on Sybil's finger would be forgotten in a whirl of cooing and baby clothes and excitement. Marrying her would show her that he wanted to be with her, be around for _her_ and not for the baby they had accidentally conceived. He couldn't find the right words then, tiredness clouding his brain and he felt himself slipping into sleep, her own limbs growing heavy beside him, her breathing even. He would tell her tomorrow, he thought, he would make sure she knew that tomorrow. He gave in to sleep.

* * *

The sound of Sybil in pain woke him. Her breath was catching in her throat and she swore as she began to cry. His eyes flicked open to see her sat on the side of the bed, her hands fanned over her lower abdomen, a few dark spots of red staining her nightdress and the bedclothes. It took him a while to understand, to process what he saw.

"Oh god." He moved so he was behind her, his hand on her lower back. "Oh fuck," he pushed the hair away from her face and her eyes met his. She looked terrified and her bottom lip quivered.

"What do we do? I don't know what to do." She was beginning to lose it; he could see the panic spreading through her.

"Stay there," He climbed out of the bed, pulling on a pair of jeans, "Stay there and I'll ring a cab, we need to get someone to look you over." A taxi would be quicker than an ambulance at this time of night, they weren't far but he couldn't make her walk. He rang the cab company, his voice shaking as he told them their destination. She was exactly where he had left her when he returned to the room, but now tears were flowing down her cheeks. He knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his. "We'll be there soon, we'll get you looked after, I promise." He rummaged through the drawers in her bedside table, found a thin jumper and the soft jogging bottoms she slept in in winter and dressed her quickly, helping her to the bathroom briefly while they waited. Her hands shook in his as he helped her onto the toilet, and in the bright light of the bathroom he saw how pale she was.

"It's my fault." Her voice was tiny, weak, barely audible. She looked up at him with eyes like saucers and her face torn with guilt and upset, he was halfway through shoving some things into a toiletries bag – a toothbrush, soap, a bundle of sanitary towels, a flannel and her hair brush. "It's all my fault. I shouldn't have…" Her words caught in her throat, "I should have been happy. And all I saw were bad things." She let her face fall into her hands, elbows resting on her knees, "And now its gone, and now I'll never know the good things."

"No," His words were loudly that he meant them to be and startled her slightly, her crouched down next to her, a warm hand on her back, "I won't let you go thinking this is your fault. You've done nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to feel guilty for." He turned her face to his with his had, his thumb wiping away some of her tears, "We don't even know that anything is wrong, this could be nothing." He was lying, the look on her face, the way she curled over herself in pain told him this was something to worry about – his words were as much for him as for her.

The doorbell rang and he wrapped her coat around her shoulders, helped her to slip on some shoes. He held her against him as they walked down the steps of the building and out to the road, feeling the need suddenly to protect her from everything.

She sat gingerly next to him in the taxi; her eyes squeezed shut in what he wasn't sure was pain, fear or a combination of the two. He clasped her hand in his, running his thumb along her knuckles in the way his mother had done when they were little, needing nursing out of some childhood ailment or heartbreak. He couldn't take his eyes off her face, watching it intently for every flicker of her expressions.

The arrived at A&E first but were sent almost immediately up to the maternity ward, she slumped against him in a chair while they waited for a nurse to find her a bed, her hair tickled his face, springing out of its bundle on the crown of her head. She covered her hands with the sleeves of her jumper, picking at the threads that came loose.

"Sybil Crawley?" A smiling nurse, who looked remarkably chirpy for the time of day, approached them. "Can you walk?" Sybil nodded, pushing herself to her feet with his help. He rose behind her, gathering their things and watching her make her way slowly in the direction the nurse pointed her.

The nurse glanced at him for the first time, clutching Sybil's coat with the hand that had previously been occupied with hers. "Are you the father?" Holy shit. Yes, he supposed now he was someone's father – even if that someone was tiny and unseen and teetering on the line between life and death.

He coughed slightly, and nodded. "Yes." His voice was gruff, still tinged with the sleep he had forced his body out of so urgently. "Tom Branson."

She nodded at him, an almost apologetic smile on her lips "We'll take good care of her." He nodded in reply, the only form of thanks he could seem to muster and she turned back to Sybil. "Ok love, come with me. We'll get you sorted out."

She asked them a series of questions as Sybil lay on the bed, her face pink from crying. How old was she? How was her general health? Was this her first pregnancy? How many weeks? Had they seen a doctor? Anything like this happened before? Sybil answered the questions quietly and in monotone, too deep into her own self. The nurse asked her if she was in pain and Tom winced as she nodded and described it.

A doctor came in; he looked tired and harassed – quite the opposite to the nurse. He assessed Sybil and examined her, her face screwed up with the discomfort. "Ok," His tone gave nothing away and its neutrality riled Tom. "We need to listen to see if there is a heartbeat. If we cannot find one it doesn't necessarily mean the worst – it could just be a little too early still or the position of the fetus in the womb." They both nodded mutely, giving him permission to continue. He sat at the head of the bed, feeling helpless and useless as the doctor gathered together some equipment, one of Sybil's hands clasped around his own. There were a few painful moments of nothing and he watched Sybil's face fall, her eyes studying the ceiling tiles. Then there it was, faint at first but then louder as he moved the Doppler over her stomach, a gentle and rhythmic 'phwop-phwop'. It sounded impossibly fast, but it was there and that was enough to make Sybil burst into tears. The nurse took more blood and they performed a few more tests, all the while he kept her fingers pressed to his lips, his hand curled around her palm.

They moved her to a ward, tucked away at the far-end of the department to monitor her overnight. They put her in a hospital gown and hooked her up to a drip. They were told it was just one of those things that sometimes happened, more frightening than it was serious or threatening. From what the doctor had heard and felt the baby seemed fine, they would do an ultrasound in the morning to double check – they would take measurements and confirm her dates. Initially they wanted him to go home, to come back in for the appointment with the ultrasound technician in the morning, but the smiling nurse took pity on him, saw the way Sybil clung to his hand in her half slumber.

"There's a chair in the room across the hall – bring it through, draw the curtain and I won't tell if you don't." She whispered, smiling at him when she came in to check on Sybil.

"Yes." Her voice was tiny, weakened by the ordeal – the pain, the shock, the fear and ultimately the relief. It sounded the way he felt. He was sat in the chair next to her bed, fighting sleep, needing to stay awake to watch over her. He wasn't sure how many hours had passed; he'd left his watch on his bedside table in the rush to get out of the door and had no sense of time. He had thought she was asleep, she had been quiet for so long, curled up in a little ball in the hospital bed. He turned his head to see her, covers pulled up to her ears as usual, eyes catching the dim light of the room.

"Pardon?" He knelt next to her, wincing as his knees hit the cold, hard linoleum.

"Yes." One of her hands came out of her cocoon and pushed the sheets down from her face, revealing a flash of the words stamped repeatedly over the hospital gown. "That's my answer. To your question from last night. I never gave you an answer." He pushed the hair back from her face and watched as, for the first time that evening a smile spread across her features. "Yes." He kissed her, feeling her warmth under his touch and smiled as he drew away, wanting to take all of her in, to sear this moment to his memory. The moment she agreed to be his wife.

**I realise that people may want to read the 'oh so happy to be pregnant' Sybil in this story, but that's not how I imagined her to be at first, I think this is perhaps more realistic as a reflection of her personality in a more modern time – I don't know, it just seemed more real to me (as a woman in her early twenties, myself!) for her to be less than over the moon. So I'm sorry if it's not as fluffy and happy as some would have liked but I hope you find some good in it anyway. I also wonder if there is a bit of a 'don't know what you've got until it's gone' cliché, but I like it. Anyway, enough excuses! Let me know what you think! **


	4. Chapter 4

Mid-July 2012

"You don't think we should tell them?"

She rolled over and looked at him over the top of her glasses, laying her book to rest, open and pages down, on her stomach. "I don't want to make some grand announcement yet." Her eyes flickered down, not meeting his and she pulled the glasses off her face. "I don't want to tell anyone until we know for sure everything is alright. _That night_…" Two words were so charged with emotion; her fear, her pain, the sadness and then ultimate joy. It had ended happily, but the realization of just how delicate and fragile the beginnings of life could be had stuck with Sybil, well beyond the night she spent in hospital. He took her hand and her eyes once again found his, "Please Tom. I want to wait – I'm still not twelve weeks. I couldn't bear to make a big announcement and then a week down the line tell everyone it wasn't to be." She cleared her throat, he felt the sincerity in her words, and it gave away how much that scenario had been playing on her mind. "Mama knows – that is enough for now. Should we ever need someone at least there's her, but not anyone else. Not just yet."

They fell into a comfortable silence, he processed her words and she watched his face, she seemed contented when he nodded his agreement and went back to her book, pushing her glasses high up her nose and leaving the fingers of one hand dancing circles in his palm as she read. "Your grandmother's eyebrows went through the roof when we said we were planning something so soon. We've aroused her suspicions. If she doesn't have it figured out already, she will do soon."

She didn't even look up from her book when she gave her response. "Of course she knows, she'll have known ever since we told her you proposed." She smiled and turned to look at him, his face screwed up in confusion. "It doesn't mean we have to confirm that she is right…as usual." He laughed. Violet's ego did not need further fuel to grow.

The sun cast a pinkish light over the bedroom, streaming through the open window and curtains even at half past nine. Sybil was exhausted by the day, the nausea that had her in an iron grip through most of her waking hours seemed to leech all of the energy out of her. Today's hot, sticky hours in the car and the effort of the dinner, sitting there trying desperately not to let _this_ be the occasion that gave her away, the usual bickering with Granny, had left her dozing in her lawn chair by eight.

Her mother had leapt in, coming to their rescue – suggesting that Sybil retire to bed now, announcing a little too loudly and with obvious empathy that she must still be fighting the flu. That had been the excuse given when the location of Tom's proposal accidentally emerged and was promptly leapt on by both Violet and Mary. They had both sat open mouthed at the table, frozen not quite sure what to do, when Cora, barely skipping a beat, began to weave a cover story. Sybil had been struck down by the flu, - _'it's always going round you know, worse in summer sometimes, it can leave you knocked for six'_ - and become so dehydrated she'd needed to be put on a drip - _'it happens so easily when you can't keep food down'_ - ruining Tom's pre-planned proposal -_'it would have been so lovely, in the park the way I hear you had it arranged'_. Cora had backed up the story a little too enthusiastically and though Tom was very grateful that she was keeping their secret he would remember not to burden her as the sole holder of information like this again. Cora, he decided, would have made a horrendous spy. Somehow it had worked; Cora's babbled story and their over done nodding seemed to satisfy Robert, Matthew and Edith and after a little more work, Mary but Violet had spent the rest of the dinner studying Sybil's every move. Both were thankful that by the time Sybil was fighting to keep her eyes open as they sat outside with drinks – _just lemonade for Sybil I think, Carson, best not give her body anything else to try to deal with – _Violet and her hawk eyes had been escorted to the car and was on her way home to her bed. She would be back tomorrow for lunch though, but at least there was time to better prepare themselves for the onslaught she was bound to bring with her.

Sybil stretched out in the bed beside him, rolling onto her side with her book and pointing her toes under the sheet, letting her joints crack as she shifted into a more comfortable position. It had been hot all day, uncomfortably so at some points, the air was heavy and muggy in the way that so often blighted the warm days of British mid-summer and the night had not brought any relief with it. The growing darkness made the heat more oppressive, more stifling, it seemed to close around them both and lay heavy on their chests. He had sacrificed the fan, which had stood at the end of the bed, blowing the little cool air it could generate in the soupiness, to Sybil. She could have that comfort at least, when there was so much else ailing her that couldn't be helped, and now its gentle humming filled the room cooling her face and making the baby hairs around her face dance.

Being in her bedroom here still seemed strange to him, knowing she had grown up here become the woman he knew in this very room. It was so familiar to her, even in the middle of the night and it was so foreign to him. The imposing four-poster that suspended swathes of fabric over them as they slept, the mahogany wardrobe, the plasterwork that framed the ceiling were all original, as old as this wing of the house itself – older than he dared imagine, the fear of breaking some heirloom still haunted him after years of visiting. The dressing table that sat to one side of the window was littered with Sybil's paraphernalia, he couldn't help but imagine the maker of this table never imagined it would be covered with a layer of kirby grips, a pink plastic hairbrush and a mist of hairspray. The contrast seemed simultaneously obscene and beautiful – the stark meeting of two worlds, two eras. He hated it really for what it was, there was something deep down in him, left unconsciously by his Pa, his Daddo and uncles and older brothers, taught to remember the things these places represented in Irish history, the things the people who lived in them had done to their forefathers. The repression, the mistreatment and the discrimination that had sparked a war that truly divided their country. But at the same time he loved it for what it held of Sybil, the way the path of her growth was scratched along with her sisters' into the wooden doorframe that led to what was once servant's quarters; the photographs of her at various stages of childhood that littered the rooms, proudly displaying gaps in her teeth and pigtails and grazed knees; the postcards she had collected on her travels and blu-tacked onto the side of the wardrobe, a year written in her neat hand in the bottom left hand corner of each. There was enough of her here, enough was palpable that with her beside him he could settle, feel this was a place to be comfortable, overcome it's strangeness and it's contrast from his own upbringing.

A sudden awareness of Sybil's even breathing brought him out of his thoughts. Her book had slipped from her grasp onto the bed and her eyes were shut beneath her glasses, one hand was splayed over her stomach. He leant over her, trying desperately not to disturb her, put the book on the bedside table and slipped the glasses from her nose. She curled against him, her body reacting to his touch, her legs pushing against his in her slumber and feet working their way in between his calves. Even in this heat her toes were icy cold. He flicked the lamps off and felt sleep begin to take him over, his limbs grew heavy and his mind emptied. He watched as the final stages of the setting sun changed the light illuminating her face, as the deep gold turned deeper and eventually darker, until it was moonlight bouncing off her hair. His hand found hers and their fingers laced together.

The last few weeks had felt calmer somehow, more settled, in spite of the worry that seemed to have settled itself deep within both of them since the night in the hospital. The barrier that had seemed to grow between them in those last weeks in Dublin and the first in London had crumbled, a combination of shock and anxiousness and a realization that the person who could help was right there, the only one who could truly understand. He succumbed to sleep, glad of the bed and the calm and the open window but most of all her presence beside him, the cool metal of the ring on her left hand pressed against his palm, the contours of her body next to his. She sighed in her sleep and turned her face into him, her lips and nose tickling at the skin on his bare shoulder.

He dreamt of bringing a baby here this time next year, a baby with dark curls and rosy cheeks and big, watchful eyes. Her lashes brushed her cheeks, chubby legs and little pink toes emerging from the skirt of a summer dress, a pair of pink, ruffled knickers covering her nappy. She sat on a blanket on the lawn, mesmerizing them all and reveling in the attention, laughing as she was tickled and bounced by Sybil, cooing contentedly as she was settled on her grandmother's knee. It was the first time he had dreamt of the baby so vividly since the scare and that night was the first time he imagined it as a daughter. Imagined her as his daughter, their daughter.

**Sorry for appearing to disappear off the face of the earth lately – life has gone a bit mad all at once, as it so often does, and I've had rather a lot to do! I also seem to have scrambled my brain to the point I can't finish a chapter – this is one of three updates for this story alone that I started. The other two will make it here eventually, I am sure, just as soon as I figure out how the hell to finish them! I found this a hard chapter to write for some reason, I hope it lives up to standards! Be kind enough to let me know your thoughts, I really hope you like it. **

**I'll aim to get another update up before Christmas, but if I don't I hope you all have a wonderful day whether you celebrate or not. Enjoy your family and friends and a day to relax in the company of your loved ones, or doing whatever it is you love to do. **

**LP. x (in my fairy-light filled house!) **


	5. Chapter 5

**So this is a bit overindulgently soppy, New Year always brings out the sentimentalist in me! :p It may serve as a bit of a gentle salve to some poorly heads today as well, a bit of fluffy. I hope you like it; your thoughts are (as always) very much appreciated! I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year and festive season in general. Best wishes for 2013! **

**Happy New Year from me. LP. x**

**P.S. Not betaed, or terribly thoroughly read through, if you spot any glaring mistakes let me know :p Also, excuse the massive stereotype in the bit in italics. **

New Year's Eve, 2012

The television flickers, throwing colours over the room, dark but for the standing lamp in the corner. Jools Holland's Hootenanny is in full swing and he was introducing the next act, some new boy-band that Tom had never heard of but who looked more like they should be doing paper rounds than singing about wooing women to millions on the TV.

She curls against him on the sofa, her feet tucked beneath her, cheek against his chest. The baby, their still unnamed daughter, cocooned in a shawl, sleeps peacefully in his arms, making contented little sounds as she sleeps, satiated by the ten o'clock feed. They'd only been released from the hospital that morning, Sybil's bags are still half packed in the middle of the living room floor; the baby still has the little plastic tag around her ankle, everything that defined her entrance into the world written in neat biro. It had seemed incomprehensible to Tom that such a huge thing, this new life, could be summarized in three lines of writing. He looks down at face, her features so delicate, their newness giving them fragility. Sybil reaches over and strokes her head, smoothing down the little tufts of dark hair, and they both sit there in a mutual and contented quiet watching the baby sleep.

"Bit different from last year, eh?" He keeps his tone hushed, almost breathing the words and turns to look at Sybil. Her eyes flicker up to meet his and she smiles, she looks tired and he wants to sweep her into bed and tuck her up and let her sleep forever, but the smile changes her face, shows that she is happy in her exhaustion.

"Better." She settles her head back against him, his arm draped loosely around her shoulders. He smoothes her own curls, silky against his palm, watching the way the light catches on her hair as it tumbles onto her shoulders. Their daughter is a comforting weight against him, a warm little bundle and she begins to shift slightly, stretching her limbs and arching her back before settling again, burrowing further into him.

Last year they had been in Dublin, just arrived, fresh with hope and anticipation of a new venture. She'd just found out she'd got the job at the museum, a relief after an interview just before Christmas that she'd thought a total disaster. Mrs Branson had offered them a room in her house, the house Tom had grown up in, until they got themselves sorted in their own flat and Sybil had found herself immersed in her first truly 'Branson' family Christmas.

_They'd seen out 2011 in the pub down the road from his mother's house, a band had set up in the corner with fiddles and bodhrans and penny whistles. Guinness had flowed and there had been whiskey. Enough of it that Tom's siblings had taken it upon themselves to teach Sybil the art of a jig, despite barely knowing it anyway. His brothers' nationality, it seemed in their eyes provided an innate training in Ceili dancing. From the pounding head she suffered the following morning Sybil had considered that New Year something of a baptism of fire into their life in Ireland. Mrs Branson had looked at her with sympathy the following morning, when Sybil shuffled into her kitchen at lunchtime looking pale and languid. She'd stared daggers at her three eldest sons, Tom, Mal and Joe sat in a line at the table apparently immune to the effects of the alcohol they'd drunk the night before, and chastised them for 'not going gentle on her.' Peggy had ordered one of them to make a pot of tea and bring some ibruprofen, and when her eldest son pushed himself to his feet she'd swatted him on the arm, "Don't you even think about making it hair of the dog, Joseph Branson. I know what you are thinking." _

_Despite her suffering, it had been fun, she'd spent the entire night laughing – a vast improvement on the nights in impersonal nightclubs with the girls she had grown up with she had resented even while at school and resented even more when she had to stick to tradition and meet up with them again, seeing them slink about in ridiculous dresses and discussing people and events in 'the set' that she frankly couldn't give a toss about. Putting a sea between them and her had guaranteed an good excuse to turn down their invitation (which had been diamante covered, no less) and she had feigned disappointment and sent her apologies and wished them a good time without her. She had subjected Tom to them on New Years Eve 2010, he had insisted that 'they couldn't be that bad' despite her warnings. He'd learnt his lesson that night, once and for all after hearing about Kiki Montague's 'traumatic' Christmas spent in 'a hovel in the bloody middle of nowhere'. It had turned out to be a country house-turned-5 star hotel in Northumberland. He'd spent much of the following day accusing Sybil of setting him up to make a point and prove him wrong. _

_A cup of tea was placed in front of her, Mrs Branson spooned in a rather excessive amount of sugar, nodding at her that she'd need it before presenting her with a glass of water and two round, white pills. _

_A quiet night, Sybil thought, Tom had said it would be a quiet night. She wasn't sure she was ready for a 'raucous' night in that case. That night, when they retired to bed rather earlier than usual Tom had apologized for getting carried away and making this a rather painful new year. She'd rejected his apology and settled into bed beside him, thanking him for the best New Year she had ever had. _

"I think this beats even last year, hands down." She stretches up slightly and plants a kiss against his cheek, pausing to take in his smell, the feel of his skin against hers.

The countdown begins on the TV and the camera pans around the room, celebrities chanting the numbers in unison. They are stood in the middle of the living room, the baby pressed against her mother, having rocked her to sleep in a very gentle slow dance to the final song of 2012.

'_10, 9, 8…_'

He pulls Sybil into him, mindful that she is sore and a still delicate, his hand settles on her waist. The baby shuffles in her sleep between them, freeing her little legs from the swaddle of her blankets, Sybil's left hand holds her securely against her chest, the gold band on her ring finger catching the light.

'_7, 6, 5…'_

He stands there in these last few seconds of a life changing year, wondering the Tom Branson that had bid farewell to 2011 would have believed where he would be in 12 months time.

'_4, 3, 2…'_

And everything about this evening seemed to represent the change. The New Year would find him in a sort of exhausted euphoria, unable quite to believe his luck.

'_1'_

He lowers his lips to hers and kisses her; Big Ben begins to chime on the TV and the sound of fireworks going off drifts in from outside.

"Happy New Year, love." He speaks the words as he pulls away, smiling at her and tucking her hair behind one ear.

"And a Happy New Year to you too." She kisses him again, her mouth soft against his. She bows her head slightly and presses her lips to the top of the baby's head. Tom pauses, watching them together, his wife and child and he hopes that 2013 will be kind to him, to them all. The previous year, despite its ups and downs had been wonderful and would certainly take some beating.


	6. Chapter 6

April 2012

He knew it had been a risk, giving up his position at the Yorkshire Post to move back to Dublin, to work on Liam's magazine. When it had gone under he had thanked his lucky stars he hadn't invested much money in it, his time - sure, his life – completely, but very little money. It wasn't a disaster; they could keep going as long as he could find another job. But print journalism was, long term at least, something of a dying art. People didn't buy newspapers like they used to, not when everything you could want to know about the world was available for free at the click of a mouse. It wasn't the same in his eyes though, sitting at a computer and processing the terrors and the triumphs as they happened, he liked the feel of a newspaper, the tradition and ceremony of sitting with a mug of tea and spending a whole morning working his way through the Sunday papers. There were no jobs left in Dublin, he had contacted people he'd known from university who worked in cities elsewhere in Ireland, Cork and Limerick and Galway. He'd tried Belfast and when nothing came up they knew a return to England was the only option.

He was resistant, they had left Leeds with such optimism for this new venture – he felt returning would show his failure, he would set foot on English soil having admitted defeat, his tail between his legs. He was upset for her too, that she would have to give up her job in the museum in Dublin, the job she had fought hard for and loved every minute of. He was uprooting her again and he felt incredibly selfish, but it couldn't be avoided.

"There will be other jobs – other museums, London is overrun with them." He was sat on the toilet, lid down and she was in the bath, steam rising from the surface of the water in tendrils, snaking their way up to the ceiling. Her hair was bundled on top of her head, curls that had given new life by the dampness of the room and sprung out from her hairline were being held back by a silk headscarf. She rubbed a sponge over her arms leaving a line of suds in its wake, and he studied the curve of her back as she leant forward, breasts pressed against her knees, to wash her feet. A few vertebrae peeked out from beneath her skin. She turned her face to him, locking her eyes onto his. "There are other places that will have me, don't worry." He knew she was right. She was an infinitely more attractive prospect to any employer than he was, good schools and exam results, top grades in a degree and a masters and ample amounts of work experience and extra curriculars. She was a recruiter's wet dream, the kind of person they tried to encourage everyone to be in school – the kind of person no one believed actually existed. He had done well, after the realization at sixteen that he needed to get his shit together – his Leaver's Certificate was impressive but little before then was anything to shout about. He'd enjoyed his time at university and been pleasantly surprised to get a 2:1, much to the chagrin of a couple of his friends who had limped to a third.

The sound of her pushing herself out of the bath, the water unsettled by her movement, pulled him out of his thoughts, "Don't worry about it. It's been an adventure - Ireland. I'll hand in my notice and we'll be sorted and settled somewhere new by the summer." He rose and wrapped a towel around her and she'd looked at him, her face slightly stern – as if willing him not to apologise again, "This is what we're meant to be doing while we're young, dipping our toes in many different seas."

He laughed, and she pulled the towel around her, looking at him both confused and irritated at being the subject of his jest. "Dipping our toes in many different seas?" He twirled a piece of her damp hair around his finger and stifled his laughter, "I'm sorry – it was very profound."

She stared at him for a while, before shaking her head and smiling herself. "You can talk, Mr journo. Mocking my sincere moment. I won't do it again." She pressed a cold, wet hand against his chest, making him draw in breath through his teeth, the contrast between the respective temperatures of their skin a shock. "Now, in that bath before the water gets cold." She stuck her tongue out at him and he feigned offence, doing as he was told and stripping off his underwear, throwing it into the basket in the corner of the room and slipping into the water, squeezing shut his eyes and sighing as the warmth eased the ache in his legs – a momento of last night's squash match with his brother. As usual, Mal had thrashed him and Tom had spent much of their time spent playing throwing himself around the court, trying in vain to reach the ball in time.

She stood in front of the sink, and rubbed the steam from the mirror before studying her reflection. "God, I look tired." He flickered his eyes open as she turned to him, "Am I starting to look old?" She used her hands to smooth out imagined crows feet and laughter lines.

He smirked, "Christ Sybil, you're twenty-three. No, you do not look old. Just you wait until you hit the big 3-0, then you'll know what it's like to feel old." Tom's thirtieth birthday was fast approaching, he was doing his best to ignore it, but neither his siblings or Sybil seemed to be able to stop reminding him he had entered the last, precious month of his twenties. He winced as he sat up, the muscles in his thighs screaming as he stretched his legs out in from of him.

"Feeling your age are you, old man?" She smiled, laughing to herself and bending to press a kiss to his forehead. She set about her routine then, washing her face and scrubbing at it with a flannel before rubbing a cocktail of lotions and potions into her skin. He sat and watched, mesmerized by the ritual of it, as he had done, sat on his mother's knee at her makeshift dressing table as a little boy. She plaited her hair, and let the rope of curls hang down her back, the tuft at the end tickling the skin between her shoulder blades. She sat on the toilet and rubbed cream into her legs, chattering about some story one of the girls at work had told her earlier in the day, the demise of the relationship of a friend of a friend – 'and she came in from work one day and found him in bed, with her sister. _Her sister_. I mean, God, how low can you get?' – but he wasn't really taking it in, he was watching her hands gloss over her skin and the way she wiggled her toes as she massaged the moisturizer into her feet. Something about this moment, just a Saturday night and her understanding and acceptance of their life shifting again, her babbling about some gossip she had heard and fussing about her imaginary wrinkles, made him realise he wanted to marry her. It wasn't about grand romantic gestures and declarations of love, marriage, it was this, it was the shared bath water and her insistence on still using Matey and the two cups of tea precariously balanced on the toilet cistern. The smell of that night's dinner still lingering in the air and the fact that they planned to spend that night in bed, working their way through another couple of episodes of Poirot from the boxset Edith had given her for Christmas. She caught him staring; his silence had probably given him away, "What? You alright?"

"Hmm…" he nodded, shaking his head slightly to bring him back into the present, "Just watching."

She raised an eyebrow at him, a smutty look taking over her face. "Oh really? Well, you finish up your bath," She reached for her dressing gown and dropped her towel to the floor. She was halfway out of the door, still naked, the dressing gown a slightly superfluous prop draped over one arm. "And I'll go and warm up the bed."

"Jesus," he muttered to himself as she disappeared from view, the slightest hint of a wink in his direction as she left the room. He slipped his face under the water, smiling as he did so, like the cat that got the cream. They'd be alright, he decided, as he pulled himself from the bath. Dublin or London, job or no job, married or not. And anyway, tonight, well tonight he had more important things to concentrate on.

**Just a little implied smut - to set imaginations going (and a way for me to avoid writing it! I always come across a bit Mills and Boone when I try!) Hope you like it, thank you for taking the time to give it a read and please review - I love feedback whether it is good or bad, I'm always striving to improve! **

**Not sure how international 'Matey' is - if it is, ignore this, if not it is a type of bubble bath that traditionally comes in bottles shaped like pirates or fairies - so is usually a kiddies thing :p Santa always used to bring us a bottle in our stockings at Christmas as a treat - something I think you are meant to have grown out of by your twenties *shifty eyes***

**Thank you again for reading and have a good weekend everyone! **

**LP.x**


	7. Chapter 7

**I've been working at bits of this for ages and then somehow sat down this evening and reeled out 2000+ words, so I'm sorry if it's a bit raggedy and/or the grammar is terrible. As always, barely proofread by me (I'm lazy!) let alone anyone else. Warning; it gets a little dirty toward the end. Not something I think I'm particularly good at and possibly not in keeping with the rating! Enjoy guys! And let me know what you think, I love reading people's thoughts. Happy Easter guys! LP. x**

December 2008; Leeds, England

When he first met her she'd been leaning against the bar in the pub. All long dark curls and thick black eyeliner, winged out above her lashes like his Ma had worn her make up when she and his Pa had been courting – fancying herself to be some sort of Bardot. It suited her, made the blue of her eyes more apparent; they were the first things you looked at in her face. She'd laughed with her friend, her mouth in a wide smile, the hearty kind of laugh that makes creases appear next to your eyes. He'd found his own face mirroring that smile, almost without him realizing.

It was the last week of the autumn university term, just before the student exodus began and they made their way home to the far reaches of the country. The pub was decorated for Christmas, tinsel on every available surface and a seemingly ridiculous number of fairy lights wound round the optics and spirits behind the bar. The golden light they produced danced around her, he found himself thinking they were like some sort of angelic aura – then mentally scolded himself for his fancy, blaming the endless hours pouring over poetry during Thadrack's tutorials - and took a sip of his drink. Oliver caught him staring,

They were in some pub tucked behind the Corn Exchange, far enough away from the writhing mass of bodies that made up Call Lane that no one stumbled in from one of the gaudy bars and into the safe cocoon of this pub. He'd never have found it had Jim not taken him here on his first day in Yorkshire, filled Tom with drink and then given him a drunken, twilight tour of the city. It reminded him of the pub he'd frequented with his brothers in those somewhat giddy drinking sessions when he'd still been in school – Mal and Joe had got his drinks and kept him hidden in the booth in the corner, like they had smuggled an illegal alien across the border. The landlord, old O'Connor, had known of course, he'd been to school with their Pa and knew all of Kit Branson's sons by name and by face – and by eleven o'clock they weren't as vigilant about keeping to their corner. The occasion, two months after his seventeenth birthday that Tom had been drunkenly dared to sing My Heart Will Go On in the monthly karaoke contest had been the real give away. O'Connor had turned a blind eye, no doubt preferring that Kit's boys were in his pub, drinking under his control rather than hanging around the benches of the park drinking some paint-stripper like cider out of 2 litre bottles.

Jim's girlfriend had just announced she was leaving for a job in Australia, and it seemed that already there was a new man attached. A man called Dwayne, who was apparently a professional Aussie-rules player with blonde dreadlocks. They had bundled Jim, and all of his self-pity, off to the pub, kept his pint glass consistently topped up for much of the evening and soothed his bruised ego by slagging off this unknown demi-god who lived on the other side of the world.

Therefore, considering Jim's predicament and in some sort of example of male solidarity, not one of the group should have let their eyes stray around the pub. He'd been telling himself that all night, but something would keep taking him back to her, some unknown magnetism. He'd hear her laugh over the chatter of the crowd crammed around then and turn to see her eyes lit up, joking with a friend, her cheeks pink with drink and the heat of the room. She appeared at the bar at the same time as him, as he made his contribution to drowning Jim's sorrows, she ordered two Jack Daniels and Coke, and some vodka-orange concoction that reminded him of his sister. She smelt of perfume, sweet and musky in a pleasant way and it met his nose as she gesticulated, flirting slightly with the barman, and as she ran her hands through her hair waiting for her order. It was a welcome change these days to smell anything but sweat and beer in a pub, the smells revealed after the smoking ban had rid these places of their cloud of cigarette smoke.

He caught her eye and she smiled at him around the corner of the bar, rolling her eyes slightly at the barman – clearly new – and the time he was taking to fumble over her drinks. She had made her way back to the table she and her friends were settled at, balancing the three drinks in a v-formation in her hands, before he thought of the suave leading man move he should have gone with. If he'd been in a movie, he'd have bought her drinks and this act of kindness would have made her fall for him and somehow, magically by the end of the night they'd be clasped in some sort of passionate embrace about to set out together on an epic romance. But this was real life, and Tom Branson had never had any success wooing the ladies like a movie star. The barman pulled himself out of his daydream, prompting him for payment for the round and he turned back to Jim and Oliver, balancing their drinks on the palms of his hands.

"Falling for someone already Tommy boy?" Oliver winked over the top of his drink as he took a sip and continued to goad, "Punching above your weight with that one aren't you?" He smirked, wanting to join in Oliver's joke and shoved a new pint in front of Jim, watching as he almost inhaled the liquid, coughing on the foamy head. He was already long gone, this last pint would likely finish Jim off and they'd have to take him home and tuck him up in bed and then the girl with the curls and the leather jacket would disappear back into the hoards of students, never to be seen by him again.

The night continued much as it had begun, Jim sitting solemnly in a corner with Oliver trying his hardest to up the mood. After being teased, Tom made an effort not to let his eyes wander back to the girl at the bar and though he tried, something about her was magnetic. A beacon. The pub began to empty out as midnight came and went, people moving on to somewhere new or just calling it a night, but the girl was still there with a blonde friend who seemed to be heading much the same way as Jim, a slightly unmanageable drunk. Jim and Oliver went out for a fag as last orders were called, leaving Tom to get a final round in. His path to the bar took him past the booth the girl and her friend now occupied, abandoned by the rest of their group. The blonde looked well past it, verging on dangerously drunk and Tom heard the girl with the curls curse her, "For fucks sake Chloe, they'll never let us in a taxi now." He couldn't place her accent, it was fairly neutral – she could have been brought up anywhere in England, but there was an almost contradictory hint of both Yorkshire and something southern. He wasn't sure what he'd expected.

She tried to get her friend to her feet, but struggled, the weight of the blonde too ungainly to manage alone. "Do you want some help?" She looked up at Tom, eyes wide, obviously not realizing they had drawn in anyone's attention. "I can call you a taxi, help you get her in it? The cold air will sober her up enough so they'll take her." She stared at him for a moment, and he knew she was trying to decide if this was a moment to give in to male help she would ordinarily refuse. She was no damsel in distress. She nodded and he called a taxi from the little corridor outside the toilets, his intention to order drinks long forgotten.

He reemerged into the main room of the pub, and found the two girls in exactly the same position, but a jacket had been roughly put on the blonde – hindered by her heavy limbs. "Ten minutes" he said, perching on the end of the booth.

She looked up at him gratefully, "Thank you. I'm cursing everyone else for going off – decided Halo was worth the queue after all."

"And you didn't?"

"Hate the place." He was glad she had said that, he shared the sentiment. It was a nightclub he'd been in once and vowed never again, in the shell of an old church by the main university buildings. It had something of a reputation with most of the students, and for that very reason it made him feel old and past it.

"I'm Tom Branson." He stuck out a hand and she shook it slightly awkwardly, the blonde's head resting on her right shoulder.

"Sybil. Sybil Crawley. And this is Chloe." She pointed at the friend. "I'm not normally one in need of a knight in shining armor, but there's no way I'd get her out there by myself tonight." She was right; there was ice on the ground even when they'd entered the pub at 7pm. It'd be an ice rink by now, and Chloe was wearing some massively unsuitable shoes, she'd be like Bambi at the best of times. "So – thanks. Again."

He nodded and they made small talk that grew more and more awkward with time. A honking outside announced the end of the ten minutes and he helped Sybil gather the languid limbs of her drunken friend together. She shook Chloe slightly and abruptly told her to act as sober as possible. They leant her between them and shuffled out of the pub door, nearly taking a spill on the icy pavement with their first steps outside. They passed Oliver and Jim, seemingly completely sobered by the cold, puffing on cigarettes. They wolf whistled as they approached the taxi, goading Tom slightly, wanting a reaction. He lowered Chloe into the backseat as Sybil gave him their destination, but she kept her arms clung around his neck and refused to let go.

"You'll have to come with us. You can help me get her inside at the other end. I'm sorry." Sybil shook her head despairingly at Chloe. "Do you mind?" Tom turned and briefly looked back round at Oliver and Jim, who were now making obscene gestures in his direction.

"Nope, nothing else to do this evening." They crammed into the backseat, the driver turned to look warily at Chloe but she had settled her head into Tom's shoulder and appeared to be asleep.

"She's just tired. Not drunk." Sybil proffered, and it worked, he turned round and put the car into gear but the look on his face told them he saw through that lie.

The taxi skirted around Hyde Park and took them through Headingley, they passed row after row of Edwardian terraced houses – probably once fairly grand, or at least middling, now all split into student flats, their gardens little more than yards for wheelie bins, the front doors looking in need of scrub and a layer of paint. He could be in the midst of any student area in the country.

Chloe fell against him, her head lolling against his chest, and Sybil shot him an apologetic look from across the taxi. They pulled in front of a house on the end of a terrace, round the corner from a Co-op and he helped Chloe out of the taxi while Sybil paid, he propped her up against him and she fell into him, barely awake. Sybil let them into the house and he followed, she took off her jacket and hung it on a banister.

"Kitchen is downstairs, pop down there and stick the kettle on – you've earned a cup of tea of gratitude. I'll sort out drunken Duncan here and then I'll be down." She disappeared upstairs, having managed to rouse Chloe enough to get her legs working and convinced her that bed was a good idea.

He wandered down the stairs, feeling like an intruder in this strange house. He filled the kettle and plugged it in at the wall, searched the cupboards for mugs as it began to bubble and eventually found an industrial sized value pack of tea bags in one of the low level cupboards. The tea was brewed by the time she reappeared again, her hair now half clipped up, padding down the stairs without really paying attention to them – a well worn route taken on autopilot. She dug out some milk and handed him a cup, offering him sugar which he turned down but she spooned into her mug with abandon.

"Thank you. She's not normally so bad, the end of term got to her a bit I think. The excitement of it all."

"No bother." He took a sip of his tea, "I've seen worse, honestly. Thinking of it I've probably been worse. She's lucky to have a friend like you to take care of her."

She sized him up from across the kitchen, looking at him over the rim of her mug of tea, seeming to try to decide exactly what to make of the stranger who had accompanied her and the inebriated Chloe home. Tom desperately hoped he fell further into the 'gallant' category in her mind, rather than 'potential psycho'. He took a sip of his tea and took in his surroundings. A basement kitchen, the old servants quarters most likely – or if this hadn't been quite that sort of area, the cellar and coalhole. The window behind her head was at street level, and he could make out feet passing outside. It was most definitely a student's realm; a wok with the remainders of a stir fry lay forgotten next to the sink, along with a small army of mugs – deadline time, he thought, remembering well the days before Christmas he had been fuelled entirely by black coffee and tea so strong you could stand a spoon in it. A row of empty spirits bottles were lined up along the top of the cupboards, Smirnov and Jagermeister clearly from the beginning of the year when they were feeling flush, then Co-op own brand Vodka and some vile looking blue stuff no doubt purchased when the student loan was no longer burning holes in their pockets. A futon seemed to be the only place to sit and eat, and the floor surrounding it was littered with empty glasses – drinking before they went out, a way to reduce the cost of an evening. It was obviously a house of girls, there were bottles of nail varnish on top of the microwave, fairy lights around the window and a couple of floral tea towels that looked like they had seen better days lay strewn here and there. A wall hanging that looked Indian covered the wall behind the futon, and posters advertising club nights plastered the wall behind the TV. He liked it. It felt lived in and comfortable, even though his mother wouldn't have set foot in it without a bottle of Dettol and a mop. A damn sight better than his little, impersonal box of a bedsit – he'd intended for it to be temporary, but that had been four years ago and he was still there. Laziness more the cause than anything else. That and a fondness for the kebab shop round the corner and the proximity to a pub that showed Gaelic football and on occasion hurling thanks to a dodgy looking satellite dish on the front wall.

"It's nice." She looked at him, seeming slightly surprised that he had actually spoken after such a silence. He mistook it for confusion. "The house, it's nice. Much better than any place I ever lived as a student." Dammit Branson, he thought – make yourself sound like an old codger, why don't you.

She smiled; seeming to understand the telling off he was silently subjecting himself to. "They're the exact words my Dad said when he saw the place." When he looked up at her, mortified and thinking she was taking him seriously, he saw her smirk and the twinkle in her eye. She moved closer to him, having apparently decided that his embarrassment meant he couldn't possibly be a crazy axe man hell-bent on killing her. He could smell her perfume, and it made his head spin and some sort of lust begin to build in his stomach. "How long have you been in England?" She asked, pulling herself up onto the counter and letting her legs swing. He couldn't imagine ever having been this confident at her age – whatever that was – but he certainly wasn't there yet, with women at least, at 26. "I'm no expert, but something about that accent tells me you're not local."

"It'll have been four years last month. I came over straight from university, got a job as an 'administration assistant' at the Yorkshire Post, a position they ought to rename 'everyone else's dogsbody'." She smiled at that, and he loosened up, suddenly feeling less awkward – the tea settling comfortingly in his stomach. "I've been reporting for about two years or so – and now I get occasional use of the dogsbody. I write on anything I can get my hands on, but I like the political stuff when I can get it, sport and motoring close runners up."

"My brother-in-law will likely have read your stuff then, he's become a bit of a motor head lately. Drives my sister mental. Though most things do." She watched him drain his mug and place it on the counter next to him. She didn't want him to leave now he didn't have the excuse of a hot beverage to keep him here. She liked the company of someone who wasn't pissed or hung-over, two states Chloe and her other housemates had been flitting between since their big essay hand in two days previously. "You like it here? Leeds?"

He nodded at her. "Its nice enough. Small enough that you feel you know it, big enough that you can feel anonymous in it when you need to." He laughed at himself, "Christ, that sounded serious – I'm not on the run from the law or anything. I just mean –"

"I know exactly what you mean. I grew up in one half of an old stately home. Try being known by everyone in a village of less than a thousand for your whole life." She clearly regretted it the minute she'd said it, and he saw a chink in her confident armor.

"A stately home?"

She cringed as he questioned her on it and nodded her answer. "My father has a title, and the house is a part of it – it's been a National Trust place since after the war, but we live in a bit of it still. Away from the dust sheets and red ropes." Her eyes were studying her shoes, and she kicked them off as she spoke, leaving them on the floor in the middle of the kitchen.

"Why so embarrassed by it all?"

"Because people like the jump to the conclusion that I am just some little posh girl who will only get as far as daddy's money and influence will carry me." She finally flicked her gaze back up to him; he must have looked serious or affronted because she apologized. "Sorry, it's a bit of a bone of contention. It's easier just not to tell people. I don't think even Chloe knows to be honest. I want people to know I got here on my own merit, I've worked as much as they have for everything and always intend to. And I don't think myself above everyone – its an archaic system way passed its best, my father doesn't even take up all her could with a peerage. It's probably silly – maybe I shouldn't be so guarded." She looked around her and her eyes fell on a half empty bottle of red wine next to the toaster. "Want some?" She held it up to show him and then removed the cork as she continued to speak, "I didn't mean to bring such a downer on the conversation. You were telling me about you. Your job?" He watched as she gathered together two clean-ish glasses and a tube of Pringles from around the kitchen, sloshed the remainder of the bottle into the two glasses and passed it to him, all the while not leaving her place on the counter. The light from the standing lamp and the fairy lights reflected from her hair, twinkled in her eyes. He bare feet were tanned, a relic of a summer spent in some exotic clime, and her toe nails were painted with red glitter – they reminded him of Dorothy's shoes. She moved with a sort of elegance, no doubt drummed into her by some elderly relatives who did remember the 'golden age' when having a peerage set you well apart from the rest of the world, was never something to be ashamed of. He liked watching her, the way she tipped her head to one side as she listened to him talk, making the chain she wore around her neck dance against her collarbone.

He felt the wine mix with the beer as he spoke, completely freely. It was nice; it made him fuzzy but aware, languid and happy not drunk and stupid. He made her laugh and her saw that smile again, the twinkle in her eye as she chuckled at his stories. He told her about his time in Leeds, and she interjected with her own stories. She was 20, it turned out – ordinarily he would deem her too young, run a mile for fear of a father and some big burly brothers hunting down the older man who had wooed their daughter and sister, barely more than a girl. But there was something about her that made her seem well beyond her years, beyond his even, but still young and spirited all the same. The confidence in herself, most likely, a certain comfort in her own skin. She was studying history at the university, was in her final year without any clue what to do next – which made her anxious, she liked to know what was coming round the corner. She had a grandmother who was a ferocious character – no doubt the elderly relative who had left her with such decorum – who couldn't understand why her granddaughters were all so eager to spend their formative years poring over books and computers, 'frittering time away' Sybil mimicked her Grandmama with such brilliance that despite having never met the woman, Tom felt her in the room. She had an American mother, who aforementioned Grandmama had deemed holy unsuitable for her son. She was the youngest of three sisters; Mary was strong willed and stubborn and too ambitious for her own good and Edith was the typical middle child, had spent much of her life thus far in some sort of limbo, never quite fitting with her sisters who lived separate lives due to their age. She'd graduated and got the sort of job everyone expected of her, lasted one year and had a crisis – a quarter life crisis. She'd started travelling, she was somewhere in southeast Asia at the moment, 'finding herself'.

He exchanged snippets of information about his own family; one of eight, growing up second fiddle to his two older brothers, separated from his next brother by his sister Bridget, his Irish twin, who he spoke to on the phone three or four times a week. His parents were both as Irish as they came, Peggy and Kit, his mother from farming stock and as sharp as a knife. A woman you couldn't get any mischief past. He'd grown up in Dublin, on the same street as his paternal grandparents and aunts and uncles, the same street his eldest brother lived in now, Bridget in a house around the corner.

He wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but he found himself with his hands on her waist, his lips pressed against hers. Before he'd had time to scald himself, to tell himself to back off, that he'd ruined a wonderful night, he felt her kiss back. Her hands on his shoulders, one leg wrapped around his thighs pulling him between her legs. He could smell her perfume again, feel the heat of her under his touch and most of all her felt that lust again.

_Fuck, Tommy Branson, don't you bugger this up now – calm it, it may have been a while but she needn't know that. It'll make it seem like you're expecting something. _

It was Sybil, though who pulled back, eyes searching his face, asking what he wanted to do next. "I don't normally do this," she said, breathing softly, "Invite men I've never met home with me and acquisition them in the kitchen."

He laughed, "And here was I worrying you'd think I'd engineered this whole thing." She laughed and kissed him again, he responded hungrily. Her hands were at his belt, fiddling with the buckle and he felt her smirk slightly as she felt him harden through his trousers. She pulled off her t-shirt, exposing a black lace bra and creamy skin dappled with a few freckles. She slowly undid the buttons on his shirt; pressing kisses to his neck and against his collarbone. He helped her pull off her jeans, added them to the pile of clothing on the floor, the curve of her breasts as her breathing quickened turned him on. The feeling of them against his bare skin. She pulled him further to her, her hands on his arse, and began to nibble at his ears, making him, quite unconsciously, groan aloud. She undid her bra and smiled at him when she caught him studying her breasts, the point at which the milky skin became darkened nipple, the swell of them now exposed. She continued to instigate, pulling of his boxers and then her own knickers. They fucked on the counter top of her student kitchen, loud and unapologetic to the sleeping occupants of the upstairs rooms.

Somehow an unlikely but auspicious start to something that at the beginning of the evening neither saw in their future.

**P.S. Firstly, I apologise for the blatant lie that you could get a taxi at that time of night in Leeds in December in 10 minutes. I took a bit of artistic license there! Secondly, it's been so long since I have written Tom and Sybil that I fear their characterization may not match up completely with that of them in earlier chapters – but I figure as they are not yet a couple and have only just met, perhaps I can get away with it! I hope you enjoyed a little mini tour around the fine city of Leeds as well! **


	8. Chapter 8

**I've been working on a completely different chapter for this story for a couple of weeks, and then I thought of how exactly to write this chapter (an idea I give all credit to Sim (ehbiencherie) for, thank you :D!) and it beat the other one to the finish line! And I think a bit of baby cuteness and fluff was much needed. It is pure saccharine. And there's a little reveal at the end. My brain is crammed full of all sorts of work related crap at the moment and I'm going to blame my tenses being all over the place on that – sorry! :p Thank you guys for sticking with me and being patient despite my somewhat random updating schedule! Review if you fancy, I do love to read them! **

**LP. x**

Sunday 10th March 2013

They were both asleep, curled up in the bed, taking one another's warmth and comfort. Tom love having this to wake up to, identical pairs of lashes brushing cheeks, breathing soft and even, both of them with lips slightly parted. This was the one thing they said they would never do, let the baby sleep in the bed with them, but more often than not after the 3am feed Sybil couldn't bring herself to leave the warm bed and risk waking their content, full bellied daughter.

Tom slipped from the bed, trying his best not to smart out loud at the shock of the cold floor on the soles of his feet. It was early March and still unseasonably cold, there had been the crisp promise of snow in the air for the last few days – an extension of the seemingly endless winter. He pulled his dressing gown around him and padded into the kitchen, flicking the light on as he headed almost automatically to the kettle, switching the radio on low on his way. The newsreader on Radio 4 announces the death of an Australian politician before the weather forecast begins; promising plummeting temperatures today then snow in the evening. It was still dark outside; the street lamp outside threw orange light over the deserted pavement, seeming to illuminate crystals of frost from the inside out. He set about his usual routine of making coffee, the ceremony of measuring out the grounds and carefully filling the cafetiere with water, letting it sit before lowering the plunger. He heard the paperboy attempt to shove the paper and its wad of Sunday supplements through the letterbox, simultaneously cursing him for ripping the first three pages to shreds and thanking him for not being sensible enough to ring the doorbell to hand it over, waking the baby in the process.

He flicked through the first few pages as he waited for the coffee to brew, and for Sybil's tea to stew. He laid the supplements on the wooden tray they had received from Sybil's grandmother as a wedding present and not used since. He daren't think how much this relatively simple item must have cost, but today was Sybil's first Mothering Sunday, it seemed the perfect occasion for an obscenely overpriced, superfluous bit of kitchen equipment to be used.

He put their drinks on it and a little vase of flowers, and set about making porridge and toast. As he was cutting up fruit he heard the beginnings of the baby stirring, ready for her breakfast too. The sound of Sybil sleepily cooing at her drifted through the open bedroom door, then silence from the baby as she begins to eat. He digs the card and wrapped present out from his desk drawer and places them atop the papers on the tray. He carries the tray warily, taking slow deliberate steps, trying to avoid bathing everything in coffee.

He stops in the doorway, watching them again. Sybil has mastered feeding the baby on her side in bed and she lay facing the door, one hand is stroking the curl of hair at the base of the baby's head, the other is under her own cheek as she reclines against the pillows, eyes completely focused on the little face before her. He sees one little hand reach out, fingers stretched into a little starfish. Sybil takes it in her own hand, dwarfing it, and they both watch as the little fingers wrap themselves around her thumb.

Sybil senses that she's being watched and her eyes flicker up to him. "Morning," he half whispers, a louder voice seeming too much in the quiet calm of the room, dark but for the light that streams in behind him.

"Have you been spying on us, Tom Branson?" There's a twinkle in her eye that makes him smile. "Catching us unawares, when we're not looking our best."

This makes him smirk and he makes his way over to the bed, setting the tray down on top of the duvet and then slipping in next to his wife. "You're always beautiful, both of you are."

She rolls her eyes at him, tapping him on the cheek. "Oh, aren't you the soppy one these days." She shifts, pulling herself into a sitting position. The baby objects as she is pulled from the breast, but finds her place again and resumes her greedy sucking. "What's all this?" She nods at the tray.

"It's nothing to do with me. I just found it out there on the side." He tickles the sole of the baby's foot and strokes the soft, downy hair on the back of her head. Her eyes flicker open, shining bright blue as Sybil reaches over and flicks on the bedside lamp. "Looks like someone was a busy bee before we were even up this morning. Wanted to start of your first Mother's Day right."

Sybil smiles at him and begins to laugh slightly, before silencing herself, pressing her lips to his. "Thank you." Tom raises an eyebrow and nods down at the baby cradled against her chest. She laughs again. "And thank you too." She runs a finger along the baby's nose and strokes her cheek, the skin velvety beneath her touch. They've settled into things now, after ten weeks, they seem to understand one another. They've both learned to recognize the signals, what their daughter needs and she is rewarding them with ever increasing stretches of sleep at night. They'd settled into a routine and everything seemed less overwhelming, they were more able to function alongside their wandering around in a haze of fatigue and joy - completely brought about by the new little person in their lives. Sybil was on her way to feeling normal again and was reveling in no longer being pregnant nor sore from the birth. She could tolerate the baby on her arm or breast at all hours if it meant she could sleep comfortably again, without the swell of her stomach getting in the way, or the aches and pains of late pregnancy keeping her awake. They were still in their safe little cocoon; the baby's smell and sleeping when she did even if it was the middle of the day and evenings just watching her wriggle and studying her perfect minuteness. Things were good. They were happy.

And as much as he couldn't wait for the future, to see this little baby grow and change and become her own person, Tom couldn't help but wish they could pause at this very moment. The beginnings of the sunrise filters through the curtains and he hands her the card and watches her open it. She smiles at the message in his handwriting, seeing the wish directed at her for the very first time. 'Happy First Mother's Day Mummy, Lots of Love, Olivia.'

He spots a tear in the corner of her eye and comments on it, gently teasing her. "Now who has gone soft, eh? And those wishes aren't just because you're the one with the boobs either. The kid really does love you." She plays at slapping his leg with the back of her free hand, the card carefully pressed against her chest, sandwiched between their daughter and her nightdress. "Happy Mother's Day, love." He kisses her again and then brushes the top of Olivia's head with his lips. Sybil's head falls onto his shoulder as the baby finishes her feed, he digs into the newspaper and sips at his tea and cannot help but think this could be the beginning of a perfect day.

**P.S. Forgive the completely idealized optimism of the parenthood :p I know it ain't all bunnies and rainbows, but for the purpose of this chapter we'll pretend this kid is the best baby in the world! :p**


	9. Chapter 9

**As usual un-betaed. Also edited without my glasses on, so I anticipate mistakes! Sorry about any that pop up! **

December 2009; Dublin, Ireland

They were mindful, somehow overly aware, that his mother slept in the room only a few metres down the hall and kept their lips pressed to the other's skin, letting their bodies absorb their voices. They were slow, careful and gentle, in part from the exhaustion of the journey and in part to keep the bedframe, older than Tom himself by nearly half a decade, from giving them away. There was something about it though that seemed to heighten every feeling of pleasure; the need to be quiet, the feeling that this was something they shouldn't be doing, that all their communication to one another was through a grip of a forearm, a barely audible sigh, the stroke of a hand along a back.

She was near enough silent in her ecstasy, burying her face into the crook of his neck. He found himself almost immediately beginning to unravel, his own toes curling, his own pleasure mounting. He'd always thought it was the sounds she made that set him off, the pleasure in his mind as much as in his body, but that night it was something else. He was even more acutely aware of how she felt around him, beneath him. He buried his face into her hair that spread out over the pillow, and allowed it to swallow the solitary, low moan he couldn't stifle.

Her hand came to the back of his neck, her forefinger tracing his hairline. She blew a gentle breath behind his ear, knowing full well that his skin was tingling, that every cell was on high alert. He collapsed into her embrace briefly; letting her take his weight and feeling her legs snake around his thighs. She stroked his hair, wiggling her fingers so that tingles ran down his spine, from scalp to soles of feet and breathed soft, warm breaths onto his cheek.

They began to slip into that fulfilled, happy exhaustion that follows sex, not trying to fight the desire to remain wrapped up in one another and sleep. This room was cold, always had been the coldest in the house – up in the eaves and the last room to get hot water through the pipes, and the warmth generated by their lust and pumping blood was beginning to be beaten by the icy December cold. He rolled onto his side next to her, and pulled the blankets and eiderdown up to their chins as he watched a plume of dragon's breath dance in front of his face, his warm breath hitting the cool air.

She curled into him, her back pressed against his chest, the backs of her thighs warm against his legs. He could feel her limbs growing heavy, her breathing steadying as she slipped toward sleep. She stirred slightly as he wrapped her arm around her, slipping his hand under her vest to cup her breast. She was warm under his palm, her skin soft.

A year. A year ago at almost this very moment he had been in her kitchen, feeling himself fall under her spell. He pressed his lips against the back of her neck; he breathed her in, a curl tickling his cheek. It seemed impossible that it was December again already, that all four seasons had seen a beginning and end in the time she had been in his life. He loved her, wholeheartedly and vulnerably. And she him.

They were in Ireland for the first time together, he felt like he was presenting her like a show pony to his mother. Naturally Sybil had charmed her, she had an ease around new people that gave away a childhood spent surrounded by adults, ever the youngest. Tom had watched, amused across the table nursing a cup of tea as they discussed Rome, of all places. Sybil described St Peter's Basilica and the hustle and bustle of the piazzas, whilst his Ma listened enraptured and most unusually, almost silently – interjecting occasionally to ask a question here and there, living the trip she had always longed to make vicariously through the Englishwoman sat before her.

He had looked to his father, leaning against the kitchen counter eating a slice of sponge cake, hastily changed into a jarring mid-week Sunday best and saw the older man raise an eyebrow, obviously as shocked by Peggy Branson's prolonged quiet as Tom was. He'd heard his mother scald his Pa immediately as he came in the door, bellowing his usual greeting into the house and poking his head around the door to the front room long enough to take in what was happening. The look on his wife's face had sent him retreating back into the hallway; Sybil had politely sat staring down at her shoes, trying to look like she was doing anything but listening to Mal Branson be apprehended for strolling into his own house as he always did in the dusty overalls he had been working in all day. She'd told him to put on what she'd laid on the bed for him, directed him up the stairs and then rearranged her smile, reentered the room and smiled at them both. "He'll be down in just a minute."

Sybil shifted as she gave in fully to sleep and rolled onto her front, just as she always did. His arm lay over her back, his fingers ghosting the two dimples at the base of her spine listening to her breathing. Somehow it felt like a perfect moment, a snippet of time where there was nothing negative about either of them, no worries, no maladies, no pain. He took a while, there in the darkness, to appreciate it. Knowing that a matter of months ago life had felt anything but positive, the pessimistic part of him reminding him how quickly it had come and how quickly it could change again. The moment needed to be held, clasped close to his heart, to remember as perfect.

At the beginning of the new academic year, against her parents' advice – they had after all barely known each other for half a year, they'd moved in as a couple. She'd started postgraduate study, part of a long quest to discover what she wanted to do with herself, and the girls she had lived with throughout her degree – including Chloe – had left with the student exodus the previous June, returned to their parents' houses in the home counties to drift aimlessly from job to job until something seemed to fit. He'd been more than happy to move out of the flat he'd shared with Jim, the girlfriend that had jilted him for the Aussie had returned in May and they had spent the months of early summer in Jim's bedroom having ridiculously loud sex, and on one occasion had ventured in to the living room, thinking Tom was out. And so when she'd asked, shyly and somewhat nervously if he wouldn't mind bunking up with her as she was staying in Leeds, he'd jumped at the chance. He wanted more of her; his appetite for her company couldn't be satiated. It was fast, but why not. Why wait around, for the sake of clocking up a few more months together, merely to appease others. Her father had taken it badly and had been rotten in his childish silence to his youngest daughter for months. Her mother had been cautious in her kind way, wanting her daughter to learn her own life lessons but dreading seeing her get hurt. But they had gone ahead in the end, taken a deep breath and jumped, knowing deep down this would make them happy – that this was what they needed.

They'd begun to set up a life together in a little ground floor flat behind the University Union. It had dodgy electrics that cut out when you had too many things on at once, and a terrible damp problem that left the place cold even when the extortionately costly storage heaters were on full blast. But it was theirs and that felt wonderful. The Sunday mornings spent luxuriating in bed, knowing full well they had to get up and get things done, but the comfort of the duvet and one another proving more attractive. The early mornings watching her flit around the bedroom getting dressed, knowing they'd be coming home to one another at the end of the day. Even the rows over the cleaning, his tendency to leave dishes in the sink for a little longer than was hygienic – even they could be enjoyed somehow. They were a worthy price. He pressed a kiss to Sybil's temple, and rested his face into her shoulder feeling himself drift toward sleep, his mind filled with her.

* * *

He woke the following morning to feel cold air whipping around him, the room bathed in harsh light. He rolled over and was met by the sight of Sybil leaning out of the open sash window; her face held up toward the sun, eyes closed. Church bells were chiming somewhere in the distance – calling worshippers to Mass on the last Sunday of advent. They would light the final purple candle in the advent wreath, preparations already in full swing for Christmas itself. He imagined the altar boys being handed their schedules, just as he had been, simultaneously dreading and excited by the thought of midnight mass. He rolled over to look at the alarm clock, quarter to nine. His parents would already be there, installed in the little room off the vestry, his father sorting the collection baskets, his mother, bereft without her flowers at this time of year, seeing that the servers were all turned out nicely. It would be a while until they returned, his mother was the hostess for the tea and biscuits that followed – an opportunity for a gossip. His sisters would have been dragged from their beds and taken with them, and he imagined there would have been some discussion as to whether he and Sybil should be woken too. He had little doubt his Da had won out, telling Peggy that surely they deserved a rest, a recovery from their travels.

He coughed and she turned, slipping herself back into the room, a smile on her face. "I love that sound, it reminds me of home somehow. Church bells make me think of being out in the midst of the country again." He returned her smile, studying the way the cold had blushed her cheeks, reddened the tip of her nose. "It's one of those perfect December days, cold and sharp but bright." She pulled the window down and slipped into bed with him, pressing her cold limbs to him, stealing his accumulated warmth. "Can we explore? I want you to show me around, see what there is to see."

He tapped her nose and pressed a kiss to her lips, feeling her mouth grow into a smile beneath his own. "Of course, they'll be gone for hours yet, there's coffee and malicious gossip to be had after mass. They've got themselves in the Lord's good books for the week so they allow themselves to spread a fewer rumours."

He felt her hands slip below his waist, raised an eyebrow at her. "I thought you wanted to get out for an adventure?"

"Just five more minutes," she looked at him, the twinkle in her eye that told him more than her words, "as we've got the house to ourselves."

**A wee bit of fluff to break the unintentional hiatus. Hopefully my next update will take less time than the last one (blimey, under 5 weeks – here's hoping!) Thank you to whoever it was who was lovely enough to nominate me for a Highclere award – you've no idea how much it made my day! It really, really did. Thank you so so much. And thank you for reading! Do let me know what you think. LP. x**


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10 – Mid-July 2012 (Post Chapter 4)

Her movement in the bed beside him shook him awake. It was still fairly dark, but the beginnings of dawn were beginning to make their mark on the sky – tinging the blackness with strips of yellow. It was regular, like an alarm clock – as if her body could suppress her sickness all night before breaking the dam at 6am. She'd thrown the covers off herself and onto him and he was aware not only of her absence but by the sudden cool of air touching skin which had, moments before, been pressed against her and her warmth.

He followed her, his mind still fuzzy with a deep, heat-induced sleep, along the hallway toward the bathroom. An old bedroom probably, the house being built long before the days of indoor toilets and baths, this room had a bay window that was probably indecently large for a room in which people regularly stripped themselves of their clothes. But there was no one to see you in all of your glory on this side of the house but the sheep out on the hillsides in the distance, save the odd lost tourist, wandering onto a section of the grounds they shouldn't be in.

She was already retching over the toilet, the colour gone from her face. He pushed her hair into a bundle on her crown and held it there, rubbing at her back with his other hand. She swatted him away briefly, asking for water and by the time he returned to her she had finished and was slumped with her forehead on her arms over the toilet bowl. Somehow it was cooler in here – all the tiling probably, still not warmed by the sun having cooled in the night – and he watched as she pressed her head to the wall next to the toilet, letting the cold leech onto her skin.

She was worse first thing in the morning, starting as soon as she woke up and then continuing until about 9 o'clock. She'd started having to get off the Tube half way into work in the city to be sick in the station toilets; she had begun to be able to time it right so she could have herself cleaned up and composed when the next train pulled into the platform. She was oddly proud of that – turning these things into achievements made light of how miserable it made her feel, the nausea that swam around her through the day.

"Better?" His voice cracked with the early morning and his tentativeness. The neutral 'hmm' he received in reply confirmed this had not been the right thing to ask. She rolled her forehead against the tiles and shifted so she was facing him.

"I'm not sure I can take any more of Granny's harping on about the wedding and the way things 'should be done'. And if I hear one more mention of her mother's bloody veil…" She pushed herself up to her feet, flushed the toilet, quickly scrubbed her teeth clean and took the water from him – taking a sip as she slipped an arm around his waist and allowed herself to be led back toward their bed. He threw back the curtains and the windows before helping her slip back between the sheets, desperate for something to stir the air in the room. Hoping the fresh air might give her enough time before her stomach rebelled again to sleep a little. It had been one of those nights she had slept so deeply that it barely felt she had slept at all, exhausted by vivid dreams she couldn't pull herself from and the heat, oh God, how she hated the heat. The sheets were cool again, crisp against her skin and cool morning air was beginning to flow through the window, mixing and dancing with the warm stuffiness of the room. Lifting it, making it gradually more tolerable. It felt wonderful. If it weren't for the bitterness of the bile in the back of her throat, the tenderness of her breasts, she could be floating on a cloud. She'd forgotten the joy of feather mattress toppers, and as she slipped into a doze she made a mental note to buy one before the winter set in, when she would be too big with this baby to be comfortable any which way. Lying on a cloud may at least make it more bearable.

Tom looked up from his book as Sybil mumbled something about feathers and clouds and John Lewis, her voice barely heard, a sigh lost somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. One of the straps from her pyjama vest had slipped down on to her arm; he pushed it up gently, letting his fingers ghost the dappling of freckles that now graced her shoulders. A miserable start to the summer had given way to way to a fortnight of weather that seemed more reminiscent of southern Europe than London and Sybil had found herself spending her afternoons reading lain out on the grass in a park, watching the world go by, enjoying the 'golden hours' between two and four when her body felt almost normal again, when she was brave enough to be a fair distance from the toilet or sink or the enamel bucket that had become a fixture next to their bed, for the mornings she was too numbed with sleep to race to the bathroom before she began to heave. She'd caught the sun and it had transformed her creamy skin, it was now the colour of strong tea and freckles had emerged out of nowhere on her shoulders and arms, and his personal favourite, across the bridge of her nose. He kissed her cheek and she curled closer to him, stirring enough to mutter something about being asleep.

Another twenty minutes slumber seemed like an excellent idea to Tom too. Anything to give them the strength to face Violet, for they had been promised a visit today in which she intended to continue to discuss arrangements for the wedding. An engagement that had caused Sybil's face to fall when announced by her Mother. Somehow, stupidly neither of them had considered that Sybil's grandmother would want to add her two pennies worth. How naïve of them, to believe that the most opinionated woman they had ever met would keep quiet. Yes, more sleep, a clearer head, they would be essential in getting them through a torturous afternoon.

He stretched out beside Sybil, his hand spread over her lower abdomen. And as he pressed a kiss to her hair he let his mind run away from him, imagining the child that lay inches from his palm.

**Sooo…this is largely a chapter about sick. I'm charming ;) Inspired by real life events (I sat round listening to my mother and aunts and cousins sharing their morning sickness war stories the other day, it was brutal) though, so somehow it's allowed! :p Was originally part of a bigger chapter but I still cannot finish the second part for the life of me, so you're getting little and (more) often. Next part should follow straight on from this. Thank you for reading (I was about to say all of you are darlings, and then thought what a stereotype I'm becoming – but you are really), let me know what you think if you fancy. LP. X**

**P.S. My original intention was that every chapter in this story would involve a bed somehow (keeping you warm, get it! It's also a song by Ellen and the Escapades it is worth you checking out!) – I think I've managed it thus far, but fear I'm getting a little repetitive. I'm a great believer in beds being the place of everything in life; sex, sadness, happiness, cuddles, loneliness, despair, contentment…errr, sleep. Especially between couples, it's such a private place just of your own. Thoughts on the potential repetitiveness more than welcome. Also, since splitting up this chapter am having issues getting a bed into the next one! **


End file.
